CITY IN THE SKY
by ComsatAngel
Summary: 12,000 human survivors aboard Arcology One are stuck in orbit: the Great Northern War destroyed all means of ever getting back to Earth.  Their sphere is wearing out, time is short, and a hostile agency is loose on the planet below. Enter the 7th Doctor!
1. Chapter 1

CITY IN THE SKY

PROLOGUE

There are very few occupations more tranquil and relaxing than sitting and idly contemplating a fishing line, under a big blue sky on the banks of a placid English river.

Then again, there are few more frustrating trials of endurance than having to sit and bubble inside, seething with indignation, hatred, self-pity and contempt, when one's companion is endeavouring to let the day slip away, un-remarked.

In this case the angler was, of course, the Doctor. He had a line attached to the end of his umbrella, which lay balanced across his knees whilst he lay prone on the grassy bank, straw hat pitched over his face.

The young woman sitting, knees up to her chest, hugging herself tightly, was Ace. To her mind the Doctor had decided to inflict a cruel and unusual punishment on her, dragging her away from Mike Smith's funeral to sit on the banks of the River Rowley. The funeral might have been grim but she would have had the company of other people, instead of having merely her own sombre thoughts.

She moodily threw a stone into the slow, green waters of the Rowley, creating a notable "plop".

'Ace!' scolded the Doctor. 'You'll scare the fish away.'

Some hope! she nearly replied.

'Scumbag,' she added, accidentally speaking aloud.

The Doctor tipped his hat back, looking at her with a touch of ancient wisdom.

'Oh dear. I did hope bringing you here might quieten your troubles a little, relax a bit, contemplate the beauties of nature. Recriminations because of Sergeant Smith, eh?'

It wasn't _her_ fault that Mike had turned out to be a neo-Nazi scumbag, after she'd fallen for him big time. She ought to be glad he was dead, traitor that he was, except she couldn't quite bring herself to believe it.

Recognising the symptoms of a heavy heart, the Doctor hauled his line in and sat up. So much for quiet contemplation! Ace needed distracting.

'A tragedy,' he murmured. ' "Send not to ask".' He looked sideways at the young woman, picking up her skin tone, body posture, involuntary movements and vocal stress. 'If he'd known you longer he'd have changed his opinions.'

Another muttered insult flew to Ace's lips.

'Nobody is truly irredeemable, Ace,' he gently chided her.

'Not even the Daleks?' she shot back. The Doctor smiled ruefully and shook his head.

'Ah, the Daleks. Extinct. Dead as the Dodo. What's that aphorism they use in Andromeda? "Gone the way of the Wirrn". Actually - ' and he remembered another youthful companion. 'Actually the Daleks would have been redeemable, Ace. They were playful and as harmless as kittens when infused with Human Factor.'

'What's "Wirrn"?' asked Ace, picking up on one of several hints the Doctor had carefully and subtley seeded his conversation with. Distraction, after all, needed to avoid looking like distraction.

'The Wirrn. An alien race of insect origins, from the Andromeda Galaxy. Big as bears, and considerably more dangerous.'

Picturing a fly or wasp ten feet tall made Ace feel creeped-out. She wrinkled her nose before coming back with an observation.

'Andromeda's really far away, isn't it?'

'Quite. Two and a half million light years away. I only travel there when necessary – bit of a commute when the Tardis isn't as reliable as you'd want her to be.'

For several seconds the only sounds to be heard were a distant jet airliner, the ripple of the river and muted calls from moorhens amongst riverbank reeds. The Doctor felt pleased – Ace was diverted, mulling over what she'd been told.

'How come they're extinct?' she began, before letting her arms fall to her sides and trying to frown at her mentor as realisation dawned. 'You've changed the subject!'

He chuckled.

'Yes indeed. Quick of you to notice – your observational skills are improving. Very well: the Wirrn. In the thirtieth century Earth is going to be devastated by solar flares. A fraction of the human race enters orbital suspended-animation, whilst most go underground to live in subterranean cities. Another fraction heads out into deep space, which includes Andromeda -'

- and what a struggle that had been when they got there. Convinced that Earth-bound humanity was doomed, the Gal Sec human colonists had offered no quarter when they came across the Wirrn, the dominant life-form in Andromeda, and who themselves attacked the unfamiliar alien intruders in unrelenting conflict. A conflict that took place across almost eighteen per cent of the galaxy, a truly colossal war that lasted for nine hundred years. By the end of it the Wirrn were wiped out.

'But one of them, and a Queen at that, must have stowed away on a Gal Sec ship that returned to the Solar System,' finished the Doctor. 'This, the last of the Wirrn, sought revenge, and Space Station Nerva was the perfect environment for it. Sterile, so no alien pathogens to worry about. No weather. Nothing living or conscious to thwart it, and six thousand defenceless humans to assimilate or lay eggs in.'

This time Ace made a sound to go with her wrinkled nose.

'Ewww! Horrid. Mind you, that's a lot of people. Six thousand of them.'

The Doctor took up a characteristic pose, resting his chin on his upright umbrella.

'Six thousand people's nothing, Ace.'

'It is too!' she replied, with feeling. She felt compelled to defend human endeavour. 'I know there's only been a few on Mir and Skylab. Six thousand's a lot, Professor.'

Recognising this casual address, the Time Lord realised Ace wasn't brooding any more on the past, on funerals or Mike Smith.

'Try one hundred and fifty thousand, Ace.'

She looked incredulous.

'Honestly, quite true, Ace. The planners behind Nerva knew their project would succeed because their far less-advanced ancestors put the equivalent of an entire city into orbit, and kept them up there for decades and decades.'

'When?'

'About a century from now.'

Typically, one question begat another from the young woman. All thoughts of death or being unlucky in love were forgotten.

'Okay, why did they do it?'

A sigh was her only reply.

'Come on, Professor, you can't tease me with half a story!' She paused. 'Or do you want me to fill the gaps in by myself?'

The Doctor turned to look at her, looking only slightly less-puzzled than she did.

'It had to do with the Big Crash, the Great Northern War and the Human Salvation Project,' he said, before stopping. 'I did plant some seeds about possible survival methods at the time, but didn't stay to see if they were ever taken up. Do you know, I never visited the Arc-ipelago, not once. Nor Earth at the time. Bit of a mess. I stayed clear until the background count diminished to a safe level.'

'Hang on,' complained Ace. 'What are all these things you've just introduced?'

Shrugging, the Doctor got to his feet and offered his companion a hand up.

'I don't know. Shall we go and find out?'

'Cool!'


	2. Chapter 2

LOOKING AT THE STARS

CHAPTER 1 : Your Application's Failed

Knightsbridge

London

2015

When Mark Harris's wife heard the front door to the apartment slam shut, her heart sank. She could tell, by the force used to slam the Yale closed, that Mark's day had not been good.

'I'm in the kitchen,' she called. 'Shelling peas.'

Her husband audibly dropped his attache case on the sitting room floor, draped fabric on the settee – his overcoat – and grunted in reply. He came padding onto the kitchen floor in his stocking soles, making a face as the chill from the tiles sank into his feet. He thoughtfully gave her a hug from behind, kissing her neck and making her drop a few peas.

'How was your day?' he asked, backing off and trying to steal peas.

'Probably better than yours. Ellen let drop the hint that she's thinking of taking early retirement, so the school will need a new head.'

'Oh. Thinking of applying?'

'Maybe. Could you fill the kettle? And – how was your meeting?'

He sighed, deeply, and Marcie felt her stomach flip in sympathy.

'Not good. The European Space Agency isn't able to commit anything due to the need to get a political consensus. Which, unofficially, would take years to obtain. Years!'

He got out a bottle of Tokay and poured them both a glass. Marcie clinked her glass against his and looked earnestly at him.

'This job of your is eating you up.'

He nodded in agreement.

'It won't last much longer. If Martin and I can't get this project off the ground, he goes back to Cambridge and I go back to BAE Systems. The grant from Bonetti's trust is nearly gone.'

Marcie privately considered that this might very well be the best possible outcome, not saying it out loud because she wasn't stupid.

'You go and sit down, I'll put the potatoes on. The roast is already cooking.'

She joined him a minute later. The big plasma television was already on, Mark flicking it to a news channel to catch the early evening news. A bizarre-looking aircraft with twin fuselages was shown being flown with a voice-over describing the flight of the "White Knight", a project that was the personal brainchild of Sir Richard Branson, designed to create and service the potential market for space tourism –

Mark nearly choked on his glass of wine, sitting up abruptly and increasing the volume. He turned to look at Marcie with an expression of incredulity and amazement.

'That's it! That's it! Wait, I have to call Martin.' He fumbled his mobile open and dialled the first number that came up on speed-dial.

'Come on come on, pick up. Martin! This is Mark – are you home yet? No. Damn. Listen, when you get in, put on a news channel and wait for something called the White Knight to come up. Believe me, you'll know what I mean when you see it.'

He closed the phone and kissed Marcie with passion.

It took three days for them to arrange an interview with Sir Richard. The fact that both were members of the Bonetti Report's panel made the process a little easier. They didn't push the link too much, just in case it backfired – a lot of people didn't want to hear how close the world was to meltdown.

Their meeting made Mark nervous. Martin didn't show any great emotion. They were shown to a room more akin to an open-plan waiting room than the corporate office of a billionaire entrepreneur, with subdued lighting, big comfortable chairs, giant potted ferns, and desks scattered about.

Sir Richard, looking like a man about to go for a stroll down a country lane, gestured them both over to a cluster of chairs.

'Can I get you a drink? Anything hot or cold?'

Martin politely refused. Mark asked for orange juice. Minutes later a PA appeared with a tray holding a pot of tea and a glass of orange juice beaded with condensation.

'I must say, your call intrigued me. You put all your cards on the table, and no mistake. "We would like you to invest in a project that will cost billions, that you won't live to see completed, that will take decades to complete and which nobody else will help you with. It will, however, help to offset the consequences foreseen by the Bonetti Report." I think that's how it went.'

Martin grinned bleakly.

'We've spent so long talking to so many people that we cut the waffle.'

Sir Richard looked keenly at each man in turn.

'I don't think what you have to say would be "waffle", Mr McCarthy. Astrobiology research at Cambridge. And you, Mr Harris – Deputy Head of Systems Research at British Aerospace.' It was his turn to grin. 'Yes, I have checked up on you. Both of you were researchers for the Bonetti Report.'

Mark relaxed slightly, daintily and appreciatively sipping his fruit juice. If the entrepreneur was familiar with the Bonetti Report then things would run much faster. The Report had been a seven-day wonder earlier that year, before people got apocalypse-fatigue and it receded into the background, chased there by the perpetual bickering between Taiwan and China.

'The Report has been dismissed by some as scaremongering of the highest order, Sir Richard,' began Martin. 'How much have you read?'

'Not all of it - '

'Yes, it is quite weighty. Most people just read the Abstract and the Summary instead of the other twelve hundred pages.'

'Guilty!' laughed Sir Richard. He sobered up immediately. 'They still make scary reading. One half of the human race dead within a century.'

He caught the sudden darted glance between both scientists and realised they were keeping a secret.

'Ah. Yes. The fifty per cent total,' drawled Martin. 'That was actually a compromise that Professor Bonetti insisted on. The upper-bound figure was too depressing, so the Report only mentioned the lower-bound.'

Their interviewer didn't speak, only looked enquiringly.

'Ninety-two per cent extinction,' finished Martin, making Sir Richard look shocked. He didn't speak for several seconds.

Mark knew this reaction from their endless interviews with agencies and quangoes and panels and committees. _At least _three billion would die within the next century, maybe as many as five and a half billion, in unavoidable wars, famines, epidemics and pollution. That was the bottom line, what Bonetti had assembled his hundred experts to conclude, what he had spent every lire he had to calculate - and which nobody wanted to hear.

'Are we talking about the end of the human race?' asked Sir Richard, quietly. Mark shook his head.

'No, Sir Richard, not at all. Human beings are too numerous, too clever and too adaptable to get wiped out. What the Big Crash will do is reduce human civilisation to conditions as they were in, say, ten thousand BC.'

'And it's unavoidable?'

'It's unavoidable. Within a century.'

Sir Richard distractedly poured a cup of tea and stirred in milk. He took a sip, made a face and added sugar.

'There's really no way to avoid this Big Crash? None at all?'

Mark shook his head; Martin, not bothering if the interview came to a positive conclusion or not, offered more detail.

'You could only prevent it if you had a time machine. Go back a couple of hundred years and alter the development of technology, change society, divert politics, basically change everything. As things stand, we have what Emilio – sorry, Professor Bonetti – called the Principle of Convergence. All roads lead not to Rome, but to catastrophe.'

He didn't enlarge on the Principle of Convergence, which constituted a complete chapter in the Report, drawn up by ecologists, economists, logisticians and futurologists.

'Okay, so the human race faces an utter catastrophe. An unavoidable crisis. What does your "Human Salvation Project" offer to avert it?'

Mark had the grace to blush, while Martin merely sniggered.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We had the publicists create a really impressive title, which we fondly imagined would catch people's attention.'

'Martin! I'm sorry, Sir Richard, we've seen so many people and gotten nowhere that we're – I think we're probably out of patience. The Human Salvation Project is only a title. What our side of the Project really want to create is a Bernal Sphere.'

Here he paused. This wasn't a conversational gap rendered in order to sip orange juice, or look over the giant office, or see how Sir Richard was dressed. He paused because he wanted to know-

'Aha. The original space station, from the nineteen-thirties.'

Martin's smug expression vanished, replaced by one of surprise and respect.

'You're familiar with the concept?'

'A little. Our planning people have come up with ideas involving habitats in outer space. Very long-term stuff, speculative and not very here-and-now.'

If both scientists hadn't been taken aback they might have exchanged another glance. Mark's briefcase held a centimetre-thick pad of blueprint flimsies that broke down the construction assembly of an orbital Bernal Sphere, from the largest component (laminated Lexan exterior walls) to the smallest (nuts, bolts, screws and trusses). To them, an orbital environment was merely next-year, or next-decade at the worst.

'You've put us on the back foot,' admitted Mark. 'Nobody else at your level has ever known what we're talking about.'

Partly, his response had been dulled by endless unsuccessful meetings across the world. To date he had met with thirty-two governments, NASA, the UN, the ESA, OPEC, NATO and other acronyms, a veritable word-salad of organisations that either couldn't or wouldn't help. His other colleagues, pushing less expensive or technical solutions, might be doing better, but not by much.

'Really! That's damn short-sighted of them. Ninety-two per cent of your country dying ought to concentrate the mind wonderfully, I would have thought.'

Both scientists gave the same rueful, woeful sneer.

'There were governments that were interested – such as Taiwan and Holland and Israel – but unable to help. There were those that could help but they weren't interested.'

'Once we got across the idea that this would take decades, every politician promptly lost interest. NASA said they might have a window in twenty or thirty years, after M3.'

'Why me?' asked Sir Richard.

'We never considered this as a private business venture. Until I saw the news article about the White Knight neither of us ever dreamt of approaching an entrepreneur.'

Mark didn't mention his knowledge of "Spaceshipone" because it simply wasn't relevant, being rather small and not up to their criteria in any way.

Sir Richard had promoted Virgin Galactic heavily, as the fledgling space-tourist industry remained small and fragile – the big recession had bitten heavily into budgets and thrown timing and launch dates off. His planned fleet of five spaceplanes able to take tourists to the edge of space was instead restricted to only two, with a third looking only possible at best and more likely never to happen.

'Your access to and control of lifting vehicles able to put components in orbit is crucial,' explained Mark. 'If you say "go" they go, and there's no worrying about costs or budgets or deadlines or elections.'

'I take it you have plans in that briefcase – well, leave them with me, let me look them over, talk to some of my experts and I'll get back to you.'

Two days later Mark got a call in the evening, from a number he didn't recognise.

'Hello?' he began, uncertainly.

'Mark? This is Richard Branson here. Count me in!'

Mark Harris and Martin McCarthy weren't alone in trying to recruit willing backers for an orbital repository or other forms of refuge-cum-repository. A lot of the staff who worked on the Bonetti Report took it upon themselves to lobby for the Human Salvation Project, but Harris and McCarthy were the first team to obtain concrete results and the first non-terrestrial alternative. After that initial decision, Sir Richard shrewdly made several recommended alterations in administration and the design of the giant Bernal Sphere, then left the project very much alone.

The long, looming shadow of the Bonetti Report had caused some of those in power – a prescient few – to consider other, cheaper and quicker alternatives to costly and complex orbital stations as havens. As yet, with no convincing cause, none of these options remained more than plans and outlines, all suggested by the other teams working for the HSP.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE: Both Ends Burning

Communications Suite

Arcology One

2045

With the breadth of experience, religion, language, culture and ages aboard Arc One, it was a given that any expressed opinion would inevitably offend _someone_. As far as Davy was concerned, you notched up any offence on your Tab, carefully avoided getting annoyed or causing expressed annoyance, and took your Tab to the next township meeting. Any offender collated beyond the norm would be taken aside by one of the Wardens and asked to attend a counselling session. To date the Arc had no homicides or suicides, in a fantastically disorienting environment, so the system worked.

That was Arc One. When he came aboard at age twelve, he'd seen enough of what an unplanned society could create in terms of offence, back in Yerevan. The Armenians had a very frosty relationship with the Turks, and a barely warmer one with the Azeris, and a fluctuating one with the Russians and Ukranians. You could get into a fight at school without wanting to. People could start a squabble on the tram, or in the street, or at football matches. Chaotic!

Having been Upstairs for four years, his point of view had changed. Not dramatically, just enough to regard the internecine bickering and worn hatreds of Planet Earth with something approaching middle-aged resignation, which his parents wondered about in a sixteen-year old.

'Maths genius,' his father would proudly state. 'Above petty human squabbles.' His father, the doctor.

'Literally,' his mother would add, a touch of asperity in her tone. 'I worry when the sulky teenager will emerge. Probably when he begins to look at girls.' His mother, the nurse.

Now, looking down on Planet Earth from orbit, he found it as hard as ever to imagine why people down there would be doing their best to be as unpleasant to each other as possible, up to and including killing each other on an industrial scale. Upstairs you had the Tab to detail other people's perceived or actual failings; Downstairs they seemed to reach for guns the instant anything went wrong.

The view in Communications Suite was actually a virtual one; a curved bank of digital screens, thirty-six of them in three stacked rows of twelve, that represented views from Arc One's camera, telescope, radar, laser and thermal sensors. For the real thing, you needed to go stand at one of the observation stations constructed against the sphere's transparent panels, or petition the busy astronomers for time on their beloved optical telescopes.

With a high-pitched _ping_, one of the Deputy Controllers broke into the Suite's internal speaker system.

'Is that Davy?' asked the female voice. He paid close attention; it was Virginia Branson, one of the heaviest hitters aboard the orbital environment.

'Yes, Mizz,' he replied. 'Can I help?' he added, wondering why she bothered calling.

'Just a warning. I've told all the staff working in the Comm Suite, apart from you. When I was Downstairs, a lot of the blogs were focussed on Taiwan and China and how they were snarling at each other like a pair of angry dogs.'

Yes, he pondered. Mizz Branson could pop Downstairs and Upstairs as often as she liked. Arc One had been unofficially dubbed "The Branson Mansion" a few years ago, on completion. Being one of the founding daughters, Mizz Branson could use the Black Knight's lifting body the way folk back in Yerevan used taxis.

'We're not due to cross the Far East for another ninety minutes,' he explained. 'Current plot is – let's see – over Cyprus. Do you want me to try and scope out both of them?'

The young woman laughed briefly.

'China's bloody enormous, Davy! No, no. Keep a check on their radio broadcasts.'

She broke the connection with another _ping_ and he went back to the radio receivers and set up a software scanner to check on what wavelengths the mainland Chinese would be using, and what scrambling and encryption they might use. If there was time he might contact one of the Chinese crew and ask their opinion. After all, they weren't a spy station, merely eavesdroppers.

A small, rapidly-flashing red light caught his attention. Screen Seventeen. "Terrestrial Launch Indication". The light usually flashed on a regular basis once per fortnight, when the Black Knight took off from Hungary, and occasionally when a satellite was being sent into orbit from Alma Ata or M3 components from Cape Kennedy, Lop Nor or Yaleko. He'd seen – and the indication "_Terrestrial Launch Indication_" came up again.

- hang on, the reference given as latitude and longitude wasn't one he was familiar with.

"_Terrestrial Launch Indication_"

"_Terrestrial Launch Indication_"

"_Terrestrial Launch Indication_"

He brought up an atlas reference screen, input the numbers and waited for three seconds until the application brought up a named location: Natanz, People's Free Secular Republic of Iran.

Frowning, he tried to remember where he'd heard the name before. Putting it in the database search brought up sufficient detail for the skin beneath his plastic coveralls to prickle with worry: Natanz; primary nuclear research and development centre for the Iranian military dictatorship, surmised to be working on ballistic missile technology –

This was undoubtedly the most exciting – and the most worrying – thing to have ever happened whilst he sat on communication watch. Normally he got this quiet graveyard shift because nothing ever happened, and because he wasn't old enough, skilled enough, or trusted enough to be allowed any Infrastructure chores.

Before he could do anything further, the software scanner went wild. A stream of transliterated text ran across Screen Six, first in Hebrew, then in English.

"_Emergency system broadcast, Tel Aviv, emergency system broadcast, Tel Aviv. This is not a simulation. I repeat, this is not a simulation. Goldshot, Goldshot, Goldshot. All listeners able to hear this broadcast please proceed without delay to the nearest secure shelter or the secure room within your house. Ballistic missiles with a terminal trajectory falling within the city limits of Tel Aviv have been detected being launched from Iran. Impact is expected within twenty five minutes_."

Davy experienced for real what he'd only ever read about – his skin crawling. Fumbling, he picked up his Tab and pressed the Emergency button whilst still staring at the screen. The on-screen message scrolled round again, and continued repeating.

Must be a recording, he realised.

'Davy? What's going on?' asked an unidentifiable voice from his Tab.

'Um – I think Iran just fired a whole lot of missiles at Israel. Tel Aviv is broadcasting across at least fifty different channels about it.'

'What!' gasped the speaker. Belatedly, Davy recognised it as Natalie, one of the Wardens. 'Stay there. Send a call to the Controllers and their Deputies.'

There were no transport vehicles aboard Arc One, only freight-carrying electric carts, or bicycles, so people took time to arrive at the Communications Suite. Mark Harris, then Virginia Branson, and Constanz Abramovich, one after the other, all looking pale and worried. Natalie and Portos, who must have been the Wardens on duty, came in together, looking sweaty and flustered.

'Is it the big one?' asked Constanz, the question they all wondered: is this the Big Crash?

'Possibly not,' replied Davy, managing to maintain an air of objectivity that surprised himself. 'Only five missile launches detected from Iran. No retaliation from Israel so far.'

'There will be,' commented Harris, looking grim. 'Count on it.' His gaze travelled over the screens in a practiced way. 'They always react.'

'Why only five missile?' asked Virginia Branson. The Iranian generals like to boast about their secular dictatorship's dozens of missiles.

'Perhaps they can't afford more,' suggested Natalie. The general's junta had mismanaged Iran's economy into utter chaos; her comment wasn't too far-fetched.

Screen Six still displayed the scrolling message from Tel Aviv.

'Good God above!' exclaimed another Deputy, arriving late in plastic pyjamas. He squeezed into the overcrowded one-room building, looking appalled. 'I go for a nap and the world blows up!'

'Not yet, Mister Barclay,' said Davy. 'We've about fifteen minutes until the missiles hit.' Other radio frequencies were now beginning to cut through the Israeli broadcast, all simultaneously alarmed.

'I'm looking for any Iranian broadcasts in Farsi,' explained Davy. 'On official channels.'

There were no official broadcasts. He looked up the five different wavelengths in a sub-screen of Screen Six, confirmed he'd got at least one right from memory and scanned them again.

'Ahum,' he said, thinking aloud. 'This is strange. The Iranians began this by firing missiles, but there aren't any kinds of warning on their state radio.'

By this time Arc One was over the Negev; Screen Seventeen's hateful little red light began to flash again, "Terrestrial Launch Indication". Behind Davy, the Controllers and Deputies began to talk in low tones, eventually making more calls on their Tabs. Their conferring came to a halt when first one, then another noticed the warning signal on Screen Seventeen.

Normally, the sensitive detection systems of the sphere would have picked up a terrestrial launch from almost the whole of Earth visible from orbit, then plotted an increasingly accurate track of the missile's trajectory as more observation refined the data. This time, there was no correlating missile track after the launch warning. Davy felt flustered – the detection systems couldn't be making false-positive warnings, could they?

'I have the Iranian missiles inbound on a sub-orbital track, moving east-west over Iraq,' read off Natalie. 'No trace of the Israeli missile. I wonder – could it be stealthed? Radar-invisible?'

'No,' said a voice with a heavy accent and a determined tone. Summoned by an Emergency call on his Tab, Dovid Weitzman had arrived in the Comm Suite. His loose plastic coverall didn't disguise his stocky build, nor the tense expectation in his posture. Dovid's official Arcology qualifications were horticulture, botany and fertilisation, even if he knew far too much about rocketry, ballistics and nuclear weapons for a humble biologist. 'You should get Kouroush in here.'

'He's coming,' said Constanz. Kouroush's qualification applied to nuclear physics; like Dovid, he had an uncanny and in-depth knowledge of rocketry and ballistics.

'You were saying about the Israeli launch?' prompted a Deputy.

Dovid looked across the whole panorama of screens before replying, taking out a pair of steel-framed glasses that gave him a slightly odd look, a gardener trying to be a scientist.

'Ye-es. Those launches, I bet, are from the Javelin anti-missile missile system. You only picked them up because we are directly over the launch sites. Otherwise they're too small for Arc One to track.'

'Are they nuclear-tipped?' asked a voice. Dovid took his glasses off and chewed one leg.

'Nuclear, no, not at all. But to pick up the launch – I think they must have fired off every missile they have, to create a signature large enough to be seen from orbit.'

Kouroush stood back from his hydroponic tomato bed, feeling pleased with himself. They were coming along well, the tomatoes – _his_ tomatoes – and tasted nearly as nice as his parent's crop, that taste from a distant childhood. Unlike some of the sphere's residents, he didn't ever forget that he lived on the inside of a delicate orbiting artificial habitat; being one of the five nuclear energy experts aboard kept one firmly grounded in reality. Growing food crops had been a suggestion from the Israeli, Weitzman, as a way of reducing tension. And it worked!

Before he could sample one of the crimson fruits, his Tab buzzed urgently. When he took it out of his coverall pocket, the Emergency light blinked. His stomach clenched in a spasm of fear: had the reactor malfunctioned?

'Hello?' he asked, swallowing.

'Kouroush? Get over to the Communications Suite straight away!'

'What -' he began, to an already-severed connection.

By the time Kouroush arrived in the now-crowded building, panting and sweaty after a prolonged jog, matters Downstairs were coming to a head. He edged forward to see the screens, before turning to face Virginia Branson.

'The Iranian military government has launched missiles from – where is it? Natanz – at Israel. Time of impact estimated at seven minutes.'

She felt a sense of bitter failure fall over her like a cold blanket. The Arcology was only up to two thousand seven hundred population, a quarter of their anticipated target – and now it looked as if those missing thousands would never come.

The tall, distinguished-looking Iranian felt his blood run cold. His jaw gaped in horror and incomprehension. For several seconds he felt physically unable to speak.

'That's _insane_!' he finally managed.

'Isn't it,' agreed Weitzman. 'Nor is that all. The Israelis loosed off a barrage of anti-missile missiles. At least one appears to have exploded close enough to damage an incoming missile. The laser scope is picking up significant yaw from it.'

Kouroush leant against the control panel, trying to get his mind around the problem.

'Why do it?' he asked himself, or perhaps everybody present. The junta that had taken over – and thus ensured that he fled the country rather than work on a weapons programme – were economic incompetents of the highest order, corrupt, inefficient and worthless, but they weren't _mad_. 'The Israelis have nuclear weapons of their own, lots of them. This can only bring about retaliation.'

He wondered about only five missiles being launched, and then wondered if they hadn't been decoys, used to exhaust the Israeli counter-measures.

'Ah – the Jordanian Air Force is reporting a flight of Israeli jets overflying the north-west without permission,' said Davy. 'Six of them.'

All faces turned to Dovid, whose normally dark complexion now looked wan.

'Hmm. Probably carrying air-launched cruise missiles,' he surmised, chewing the leg of his glasses. 'How're the incoming missiles?'

Davy felt a touch of shock when the trajectory played out onscreen.

'Not too good. Three destroyed completely in mid-air. Another has been affected – it looks to impact in Jordan, pretty close to Amman. One left on track.'

Kouroush groaned aloud. Davy tried to send on a Jordanian channel, to sound a warning, but had no luck amidst the frantic Arabic chatter.

'Is there any chance either might be a simple explosive warhead?' asked Abramowitz.

'Maybe,' said the Iranian. 'Or they may be full of a nerve-agent. The Israelis will assume the worst, that they are nuclear warheads, and – being fired from Natanz, the odds are good that they _are_ nuclear missiles. With a very big yield.'

Any speculation was resolved dramatically less than a minute later. The damaged Iranian missile continued to yaw, losing altitude rapidly and coming to earth in eastern Jordan.

Screen Seventeen flashed red, the crimson glare lighting up everyone's faces in the stilled room, giving them the aspect of devils. Three words in black occupied the screen's centre: NUCLEAR DETONATION DETECTED. After that, the screen re-set and displayed latitude and longitude for the detonation point. Davy coolly input these into the geography database, and brought up a rocky, barren land devoid of towns or roads. Unfortunately not totally devoid of life; a few small villages were scattered on these arid desert plains.

Kouroush and Dovid got together with their Tabs and began measuring and estimating. An awed hush sat on the rest of the room's inhabitants.

'About five megatonnes,' said Dovid, quietly. 'A blast radius of approximately twenty kilometres. Those villages visible on the geo database are all gone.' More quietly still he added "This is why I left physics for botany.'

'About a thousand dead,' detailed Kuoroush.

'Still nothing on the Iranian official station,' reported Davy, scanning. 'No radio or television broadcasts.'

Another lauch from the Negev was detected, a second Israeli anti-missile barrage. Before any interception occurred, the surviving Iranian missile split into fifteen separate warheads. Fourteen of these winked out one after the other on the virtual screens as hunting Israeli missiles found their targets. The last one developed problematic yaw, which later analysis deduced might be due to interception damage. It missed Tel Aviv but hit squarely on the waterfront of Jaffa and detonated.

Visibly pale, both Dovid and Kouroush worked their calculations again.

'About – about a hundred and fifty kilotonnes,' rasped Dovid. 'Effectively the whole port has gone. At least fifty thousand dead.'

Within fifty minutes Screen Seventeen flashed up it's warning again. This time Kouroush guessed the target before the geographical data appeared.

'Natanz'

Minutes later, another detonation was reported on the Damavand volcano, an extinct feature north-east of Tehran and nowhere near Natanz. Most onlookers were puzzled; Dovid and Kuoroush guessed, and correctly.

'That's where the generals scuttled off to before they pressed the button,' said Dovid.

'An underground bunker,' guessed the Iranian.

NUCLEAR DETONATION DETECTED flashed up again fifteen minutes later.

'Damavand again,' murmured Davy. Dovid and Kouroush exchanged glances. Both men felt the unpleasant recollection of nuclear war-fighting memoranda coming back from their respective pasts.

'Cross-targetting. They want to be sure the bunker is hit,' explained Dovid.

Screen Seventeen came up with the message again after another fifteen minute pause.

Then again.

And again.

Once every fifteen minutes for an hour and a half, in fact, seven nuclear detonations.

On another screen, a nervous Arabic speaker addressing the camera in a news studio showed blurred film of a nuclear explosion at ground zero, followed by shots of tanks and jets and soldiers, then a dignitary reading from a script. Kouroush spotted the newsfeed and translated.

'That news is from Jordan – the government has declared war on Iran.'

Another feed from Azeri state television showed the terrifying column of debris and smoke spiralling upwards from the shattered crater of the Damavand volcano across the border in Iran, a spectacle that truly made the extinct volcano look as if it were erupting again. Hysterical broadcasts from Tel Aviv showed a giant column of smoke and fire that had been the ancient port at Jaffa.

'Um – don't know if anyone is interested or not, but still no – oh, hello mum! – no official broadcasts from the Iranian generals,' said Davy, catching sight of his mother, who looked appalled and scared and quite angry. Not at him, he hoped.

'What the devil is going on here!'

'Quite possibly the end of the world, Mrs. Haritanian,' said Kouroush, very calmly. 'A nuclear war in the Middle East.'

Davy's mother clutched her chest for a second. Her earnest expression remained in place, only shading into a fearful one.

'What can we do?' she asked earnestly another second later. 'Can we help them at all?'

Virginia Branson felt a small flush of success when she heard this unselfish sentiment coming from the Armenian woman. A repository not a refuge indeed! The sphere was only up to a quarter of full capacity, all those people added since the original pioneers being added slowly – or as the planners liked to say, _slooooowly_ – to a total of less than three thousand. A quarter of their total capacity. She bit her cheek in hatred of the political maelstrom Downstairs, a mess that might prevent all her relatives from arriving Upstairs thanks to nuclear disaster Downstairs.

'We can't transmit to anyone Downstairs, mum – they're all too mad with worry to pay any attention to us.'

'Davy!' exclaimed Dovid, looking enthused. 'What a brilliant idea! Virg – Mizz Branson – we can play the honest broker here.'

With a fitting sense of irony, it was Kouroush who understood what the Israeli meant first of all.

Israel's massive retaliation against the Iranian generals brought many things in it's wake. Most deadly of all was the radioactive fallout from Natanz, which polluted a vast area downwind of the nuclear missile site. The UN helped the evacuees, some of whom carried out an odyssey into neighbouring Pakistan – an event that was to create a deadly heritage less than one generation later. Iranian rancour was surprisingly muted – in the disaster's aftermath a form of creaking, naive democracy arrived: after all, the entire military junta had perished in fire and flame beneath the rocks of Damavand, leaving a vacuum that the ever-present Iranian political underground opposition filled.

The Jordanian declaration of war and mobilisation fizzled out in prosaic matter-of-fact geography: to attack Iran en masse they needed to transit Iraq, which would have no truck with neighbours wanting to fight in close proximity. Talk of war turned to talk of justice, which turned to talk of reparations, and when the bankers of both nations met, a sullen truce emerged.

The unrepentant attitude of Israel (personified by an IDF television spokesman saying "They started it!") also had echoes, both within and externally. These went unseen and unheard for thirty years. Nonetheless, they existed, and would come back to haunt survivors.

Arcology One benefited as no other entity did. Able to observe and record what had happened, without being part of any bloc or party, and being literally above normal human concerns, the giant sphere's recordings were used by the UN as forensic evidence in studying the Short War, a.k.a. the Iran-Israel War, a.k.a. The War of Endemic Genocide, a.k.a. The War of Justified Retaliation.

Most tellingly of all, the conflict stopped once Damavand had been utterly destroyed. There were no more orders to fire nuclear missiles; the fallout gradually fell, tempers cooled and a frightened world drew back from the brink of apocalypse. This time, at least.

Governments and supra-national organisations across the globe began to look at Arcology One in a new light. They saw, not a repository, but a refuge. Plans and budgets were adjusted accordingly. The subtle suggestions of a certain advisor and other proposals from the Human Salvation Project were subsequently taken much more seriously.


	4. Chapter 4

INTERPOSIT ONE:

Almost silently, only perceptible to the sharp-eyed and the sharper-eared, the dingo pack went to ground, hugging dry, baked earth and blending in amongst swathes of scrubby grasses and sedge. Their leader had picked up the strange whistling sound which warned that the Not-Good were about to appear in the skies, and, unlike any feathered bird, these sky travellers warranted the most extreme caution. This pack had been whittled down over the past year, mainly the stupid or foolhardy, easily a dozen killed (which the dingoes could only calculate as "many"). When the Not-Good originally arrived they had killed entire packs with Fire From The Sky, until the surviving Nullarbor Plain packs learned to keep well distant from the strange place that had suddenly appeared one morning. Travelling kangaroo or camel herds occasionally blundered into the area the Not-Good considered their own and were blasted into a tasteless ash that no other creature could eat.

A soft whistling noise that a human might not have been able to hear came and went overhead, in the direction of the giant mushroom shape further into the desert. A trail of dust curled up from the plain as the sound got closer to the structure, and suddenly the flying Not-Good appeared out of nowhere, descending slowly to the ground and moving forward equally slowly, easing underneath the bell-shaped canopy that sloped down to meet the ground at four points around the mushroom.

Hackles were raised when a pair of the actual Not-Good emerged from their canopy, hackles and a low growling. The pair of erect, undulating creatures headed across the barren ground to a tree (as the dingoes saw the plastic pole), removing it from the ground, moving on again and replanting it. This brought them perilously close to the pack, who looked to their leader for any action to be taken.

Wisely, he refrained. As a junior in the pack, long ago, he'd witnessed a frantic attack on a lone Not-Good that had wandered beyond view of the canopy. Alone, it still managed to kill three dingoes before the others overwhelmed it, bearing the creature to the ground, tearing away the brittle, metallic covering, ripping into the disgusting flesh beneath.

Torn apart. That hadn't prevented the flying Not-Good from pursuing the scattered pack within a few brief heartbeats, burning half of them into ash whilst other survivors ran and hid.

Thus it had been in the time of his father, and his father's father. Dingo mythology was limited, abstract and not particularly time-bound, but they did recognise that the Not-Good had arrived out of nowhere when there had been a hunting paradise for the Nullarbor packs: few of the Good, plenty of prey and by then the stinging rains and endless clouds had long departed.

Then the Not-Good had arrived, with their unbelievably foul smell, a smell so evil it set them apart from every other living creature. Nor was that all. No. The Not-Good killed on a vast scale, worse than the Good at their worst – which is when the dingo term "Man" became "Good", because this new arrival was so much worse. From that point onwards, it became a point of principle for the dingoes to kill the Not-Good if they could manage it, at least without excessive loss.

Still, no hunting down of the nearby enemy.

Not for now, anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FOUR: Chance Meeting

The Doctor had decided to try and find out a little about the Great Northern War first. His memories of it were vague. The subject and period aroused considerable sorrow in him and he'd never been compelled to investigate closely, nor to recall what he'd found.

It began in Asia, and spread from there. Very well, avoid the trouble spots. He led Ace into the TARDIS and stood, thinking, holding one finger alongside his cheek. As a precaution he led her to a storage room in the lower levels, where a collection of space-suits stood, held erect by racks and pinions. A holographic projection itemised the suits, then a help menu for donning, sealing and working in them.

'You need to get practice in several of these. The Ares first, and then choose for yourself after that.'

'Cool! Are we going into space?'

'Perhaps. So, a good couple of hours practice.'

With Ace fruitfully occupied, he went back to do more background research in his library, passing a studious hour before making a pot of tea, drinking it and then being interrupted -

'So where do we begin?' pestered Ace, barging into the library's cloistered solitude, wearing a pair of space-suit armoured gauntlets.

'Not here, in the physical sense. We need to jump forward about a century and arrive somewhere that has access to information, at the centre of a good information sink. London, I think. There'll be any number of webstraunts we can use.'

The unfamiliar word puzzled Ace. She took it apart the way her mentor prodded her to do: _web_ – did that have to do with information and being at the centre of it? – _straunt_ sounded like the last syllable of "restaurant". A place you could sit and eat and look at library books?

'Tottenham Court Road,' decided the Doctor, pressing buttons and pulling levers. 'Nice and busy. We'll blend right in.'

'The Tardis won't!' joked Ace, to a reproving glance.

'Obviously a film prop or created for a publicity event,' was the huffy reply. Ace suppressed a smirk: he always got sniffy if you dared to criticise his beloved time-ship!

'I need to time this carefully,' he continued. '_Very _carefully.' London had been badly hit during wartime and he didn't want to arrive shortly before a chemical or nuclear warhead did, too.

When they rematerialised and stepped out of the timeship, into a sidestreet (Tottenham Court Road being slightly too high-risk a destination) both were immediately struck by an absence, and came to a mutual halt.

'Quiet, innit?'

The Doctor looked upwards, then at his feet, then at the main road.

'Not merely quiet – silent.'

'Maybe it's Sunday morning. No shops open yet.'

'Hardly. The sun is almost overhead, so we are near noon. Nor is there is any traffic noise at all.'

'Maybe they don't use cars in the future, Prof – you know, just transporters, like Star Trek.'

Shaking his head with a wry smile, the Doctor locked the Tardis doors and offered his arm to the young woman. They both walked out onto Tottenham Court Road, looking up and down in both directions along the famous and frenetic boulevard.

No pedestrians. No traffic. No movement. No lights. No open shops – although a couple of shop fronts had been smashed in.

Ace shivered. She'd been here more times than she could count and there were always cars and buses and shoppers and tourists. This felt eerie and wrong. If this were a film, a gust of wind would blow newspapers up to wrap around their feet and the headline would explain everything.

The Doctor realised his webstraunt idea wouldn't hold water. To judge from the storefronts and the dead traffic lights, there wasn't any power being supplied to this part of London at least, and the internet would be inaccessible.

'Should we look for a newspaper, Doctor?' asked Ace, inspired by her recollection of old film clichés.

'Not possible,' he replied absently. 'Print media is extinct in the twenty-first century industrialised world.' They crossed over the road and began walking. 'Let's take a quick stroll to see what we can see.'

Very little, actually. Endless closed shops, many with security shutters down. Ace didn't think much of twenty-first century fashion, or what she could see of it. The shoes looked cool, though, including a brutally sculpted pair of what seemed to be Doc Martens for astronauts. She didn't recognise much of the electronic stuff.

'Still not a sound,' mused the Doctor. The unsettling silence wasn't novel for him. Six lifetimes ago he'd arrived here with Ian and Barbara and Susan, to a similar solemnity, and again with Sarah when he'd come back from medieval Wessex. There had even been the city's evacuation when the Great Intelligence and its Yeti surrogates forced the government's hand, when he'd been fighting in the London Tube system's claustrophobic confines. The question now on his mind was, had something bad happened already or was it still due to happen?

With a grunt of recognition he saw the Tube Station, bringing back memories of being trapped there a long time ago. It's splendidly elaborate Victorian façade hadn't been altered, and the signage was low-key. The grilles dragged across to seal the entrance –

'Hmmm. Let's look a bit closer at the station, Ace.'

Up close, the damage he suspected proved to have been a physical assault on the lock by a blunt instrument, an attack that had shattered it and allowed persons unknown to get inside. That they then bothered to close the grille again meant that they didn't want to be discovered.

'Prof, I think I heard an engine,' said Ace, unable to be certain.

The Time Lord dragged the security gate open and gestured her inside, then closed the grille. He set off inside, whistling mock-birdsong.

The internal security gates might have been a problem – they were interleaved metal doors that completely blocked the entrance – if those same persons here before them hadn't crowbarred a pair open. The escalators beyond looked immaculate, and hi-tec, and were completely static. Even the hologram adverts on the walls were dull and still. The only light came from emergency overhead lamps, making the tiled walls sparkle without really providing much illumination.

Clattering down the still escalators, with the Timelord still trilling away, they heard sounds of surprise and alarm ahead, where an island of light sat squarely in the tunnel. They pressed on.

Tipping his hat politely, the Doctor tried to sound reassuring.

'Hello there, no need to worry, we're not anyone official.'

Echoes rang up and down the tunnel.

'Well bloody shut up and stop shouting then!' hissed a voice.

Close up to the light, Ace could see it came from a large, portable lamp connected to a set of batteries. Bits of camping gear lay scattered about, a lit camping stove boiled a pot of what smelled like ministrone, and three people regarded them warily. One was an old woman, a pensioner with grey hair and suspicious eyes. Curled up under a sleeping-bag lay a young woman, her drawn features equally suspicious. Sat up and looking at both of them with dislike was a heavy-set man with lots of stubble. A long steel bar lay across his knees.

' 'oo are you?' aked the old lady.

'Travellers from a long way off,' explained the Doctor. 'We've only just got into town and, wouldn't you know it, there's not a soul about.'

'Yeah, it's dead up there,' added Ace, drawing a grim smile from the man.

'Just you wait. It'll get a lot deader,' he muttered to the minestrone. 'Nan, is that soup done?'

'And since there's nobody about to explain things, I wonder if you'd mind telling us what's going on?'

That got their attention. All three stared at him, the pensioner sighing and tapping her temple.

' 'e's mad. You dunno what's going on? Mad!' she mocked.

Shrugging and smiling apologetically, the Doctor waited. Nan began to pour soup into three mugs. The man looked up at the travellers with his expression slowly changing from dislike to disbelief.

'You dunno about the war? All them lot in Asia blowing themselves up?'

'Not a thing,' said the Doctor brightly, even if his stomach did flip.

The man cursed, laughed a short barking laugh and looked back at both travellers.

'Nooklar war,' said Nan.

'Ah,' responded the Doctor, gravely. The man levered himself upright with the steel bar. He didn't quite come up to the Doctor's height but his build spoke of big muscles. He stared at Ace and then back at the Doctor.

'You tell 'im, Tom. You tell 'im.'

'_Quiet_, Nan! He really didn't know. Did you, mister? Christ, where you been?' A thought struck him. 'You're from one of them space stations, is that it?'

'Sort of,' fibbed the Doctor.

Tom sat back down again.

'It were the Pakis. They fired a missile up at you lot and something went wrong with it. When it came down it set off loads of other missiles they had there. Poisoned half the country. Then India went to war against them and China joined in against India. The Ruskies are spoiling for a war, and NATO is getting ready.'

'I take it London has been evacuated?'

'Dead right. Nan won't leave, though, so Trish and me got her here. We go out and nick food and stuff when there's no police patrols around.'

'I grew up 'ere!' squawked Nan, indignantly. 'They ain't moving me!'

'We thought the Tube'd be a good place to hide, like in the Blitz.'

Tipping his hat again, the Doctor thanked them and nudged Ace in the direction of away. A last faint shout from Nan came before they reached the escalators.

'Don't forget to shut the gate!'

The Doctor set up a cracking pace to reach the TARDIS, leaving Ace with a stitch before they got there.

'Come on!' he warned her.

'I saw a brill pair of boots,' she tried, only to have a hundred-watt glare directed at her. They passed an empty shop with the windows smashed in, and what seemed to be the remnants of computers lying in various discarded poses, arranged on tables with attendant chairs.

A webstraunt! she realised, and noticed a little piece of twenty-first century emphemera.

Her mentor didn't relax until they were inside the Tardis.

'Sorry to rush you, Ace, but I've cut the timing very closely on this arrival. I don't doubt that missiles will be coming this way very soon.' Ace remained silent. Looking up from the TARDIS controls, he saw her glancing at a piece of paper. 'What do you have there?'

She held the half-sheet of paper out to him.

'From that webstraunt we passed. You said that there aren't any newspapers. I guessed they might print stuff off, but only if it's very important. Like news-headlines-very-important.'

Skimming rapidly, the Doctor absorbed the information within seconds. The laser print was only slightly faded, dated July 17th 2065. Pakistan had, truly, launched a nuclear-tipped missile at the Arcipelago in orbit. Their intentions had been telegraphed by years of strident condemnation of the Arcipelago's construction, protests bitter enough to ensure an experimental American laser battle-satellite remained on-station to stand electronic guard over their orbital habitats. It hit the Pakistani missile before it got more than five kilometres off the ground. What happened after that was speculation, since there were no survivors at the Kahuta launch site; the returning missile's warhead detonated, and a giant nuclear explosion engulfed the entire site and everything for twenty miles around it. The memories of Iranian survivors fleeing a similar, equally deadly cloud a generation earlier came into play and millions of panicked Pakistanis tried to escape the radioactive pollution. They were forcibly stopped at the border, where –

The torn paper stopped there, a ragged edit . Both could fill in the details after that, from what Tom had told them. India would mobilise for war after witnessing the atomic holocaust enacted by their hostile neighbour. China, long an ally of Pakistan and an opponent of India for a century, would also mobilise for war. Russia, constantly suspicious of China, would mobilise just in case, and any Russian preparation would provoke an automatic response from NATO. A march to the abyss reflecting that of Europe in nineteen-fourteen, mused the Doctor.

Well, he'd seen and heard enough. With the world poised on the brink of a catastrophe that all could agree was the Big Crash and no mistake he couldn't do anything to slow down, let alone prevent, that catastrophe from happening.

'Time to move on, Prof?' asked Ace.

He nodded without speaking.

Setting the TARDIS controls, he carefully selected an azimuth reading that would put them in orbit alongside the artificial environments of the future.

First order of business was to get up into a high enough orbit to radar-scan cis-lunar space and locate the arcologies. The "Arc-ipelago", as their forced name dubbed it. The Doctor didn't want to waste time ascending in physical space-time and opted for a small time-hop of minutes into the future, which would be long enough to achieve orbit, whilst not allowing the oncoming Armageddon to occur whilst they spanned the time vortex. Being witness to such a huge and traumatic event would be hideously unpleasant, yet he still sought it as an aching reminder of what inhumanity Homo Sapiens could mete out to itself.

The Tardis scanners came up with the relevant objects quickly enough: eight huge returns on the display, with three minor ones, all scattered across over one hundred and twenty billion cubic kilometres of space. The biggest of all was an immense oblate spheroid, easily massing forty-five thousand tonnes deadweight, with a diameter of nearly a kilometre. Ace picked data from the display screen in mild disbelief at the scale of the structure. Her ideas of orbital environments were conditioned by memories of Skylab and Mir, artefacts that massed a fraction of a fraction of what she could see here in front of her.

More prosaically, the Doctor wondered which, if any, of the Bernal spheres might be armed. No human weapon yet devised could do more than scuff the Tardis, true, but he didn't want to try and materialise inside a sphere full of hostile and aggressive strangers. He looked at the readouts to see if transponders gave any clues to which nations had built which station. One display struck him: "BranMan01". Unlike transliterated radio codes in Cyrillic, Japanese, Chinese, Esperanto and French for the others.

'What are those three not carrying any description?' asked Ace, a worthy question that deserved an answer. Peering closely as if to interrogate the monitor screen in person, the diminutive Time Lord hemmed and hawed for several seconds. He looked and then used his index finger as an indicator.

'That -' pointing to one slowly pulsing blue blip on the screen that lacked any transponder code ' - and that - ' pointing at another similar blip ' are incomplete space habitats. That - ' and he tapped a less coherent, oval trace, ' - happens to be the Trojan Asteroids. Space junk. Rocks in orbit.'

'Eeny-meeny miny mo?' suggested Ace, to an amused snort.

'Hah! No. You know, when the first Arcology finally reached completion, wags christened it the "Branson Mansion".' He turned a sly look on the young woman.

'Oh, I get it. "BranMan01". Hmm. The future's sense of humour needs a bit of work.'


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER FIVE: Spin Me Round

After this temporal interregnum, they landed on unremarkable green sward, reminiscent of a well-manicured English lawn. This was deceptive since it was actually the inner surface of an orbital satellite, directly above the Earth of 2065 and the looming spectre of nuclear war. This manner of movement was supremely easy for the Doctor, being carried out merely in three dimensions as opposed to his ususal four or five.

'Pay attention, now, Ace!' he cautioned, standing beside the control console and leaning on his umbrella. 'You are going to be setting foot on what amounts to an alien world. Utterly unlike what you've ever seen before.'

Ace looked at her lecturing eldere with a sense of resignation. Let's see, what Prof Warnings are there -

Older Viewpoint: check.

Novel Situation: check.

Awareness of Danger: check.

What she didn't take into account was the perceptive (and perspective) differential when a traveller moved from timeship to terrestrial, or Bernal sphere.

'Oh my lord!' she blurted when the Tardis doors opened and she stepped out onto the (hydroponic) soils of Arcology One.

The view was not initially disorienting, at least for the first few seconds. After that, her mind began to process the internal architecture of Arcology One and compare it to what she had experienced as a young adult in Perivale.

The sky was full of ground, not sky. There did seem to be a few thin clouds up there, in between, between _there _and_ here_. The sky consisted of ground, in it's entirety. There were thin skeins that might be roads or streams, narrow reflective threads interspersed between larger glossy areas that might be ponds or lakes or seas, depending on scale and perspective. Overall the view was that of an enormous sky falling in upon the lower dwellers. There were multi-storey buildings made from what looked like giant plastic Meccano, clustered in small groups, there were big patches of greenery and allotment-sized garden zones. From her position she could see a black circular well at the far end of the sphere, and a similar monochrome cap at the opposite end. Running in a complete circle along the "equator" of the sphere were more giant black tiles.

The Earth came into view and spun dizzyingly through the black tiles, and Ace realised she was looking out of transparent panels, looking down at the beautiful blue planet from a high orbit. Her knees wobbled.

'Don't panic, Ace, you'll adapt quickly enough,' soothed the Doctor. He put up his umbrella and held it over both of them. Cutting out the sky enabled Ace to cope with the bowl-shaped view thus visible.

'Whoah! That was intense, Prof!' she gulped. 'How come none of it falls down?'

He pointed at the view of Earth, spinning out of sight.

'Centripetal force. Nerva had gravity generators, but these people use simple rotation to impart an effective simulation of gravity.'

People clustered at an allotment were looking at the two travellers with a combination of amazement and curiosity. Ace returned the stares, with interest. So these were space-pioneers of the twenty-first century? Looking more like farmers than astronauts.

They all wore a one-piece coverall, seemingly made of plastic, in different colours, and carried basic gardening tools, as well as electronic gadgets and probes. The Doctor headed straight for them, coming to a stop and politely tipping his hat.

'Good afternoon,' he began. 'I wonder, could you possibly help ?'

The apparent leader of the group, a small, narrow-hipped woman with long black hair, looked incredulously at the Tardis and back at the two strangers.

'How – how did you do that?' she stammered. Two teenaged girls looked back and forth between the Doctor and Ace. A large, ruddy-faced man partnered with a Chinese woman came across from the other side of the allotment.

'By moving in the fourth dimension, madam,' said the Doctor. 'But I'm not here to talk about my transport. Do you have a person or persons who function as a leader?'

'We have several, the Deputy Founders. Why do you ask?' asked the Chinese woman.

'I understand that a terrible conflict is breaking out on Earth and I'd like to discuss it with someone – anyone - in authority.'

'You talk as if this is news to you,' opined the big man.

'We've been out of town,' tried Ace, to a skeptical laugh from the adults.

'There's usually one of the Founders in the Communications building these days,' said the dark-haired woman. She produced a small electronic keypad and pressed a red button near the top.

'Who are you?' asked one of the teenaged girls, shyly.

'I am the Doctor. This is Ace.'

'Pleased t'meecha,' said Ace, throwing a mock-salute.

'And where do you come from?' asked the big man.

'Questions, questions!' grumbled the Doctor. 'I come from Gallifrey. Ace comes from London.'

'Perivale, actually,' she added, for veracity. None of these space-peasants seemed exactly welcoming or trustful. She couldn't blame them, not really – seeing and hearing the Tardis appear from thin air would probably make them just the teensiest bit suspicious.

'Who the hell are you!' asked another voice. Both travellers turned to see a lanky woman wearing a coverall that had silvered armbands, walking briskly towards them on the plastic pathway. 'And how did you get here – and what the – _a police box_?'

Obviously she's what passes for a police officer here, summoned by that red button I don't doubt, mused the Doctor. 'Could we see one of the senior crew members?' he asked, politely and positively beaming with enthusiastic charm and well-meaning.

The policewoman looked unconvinced.

'Look, Nat,' said the big man. 'We just saw that thing over there materialise out of thin air and these two step out of it. You'd _better_ take them to see one of the Founders!'

The Communications building had sprouted a large annexe adjoining the original, smaller structure, where at least one of the senior sphere inhabitants would loiter and eavesdrop on communications to and from Earth. The Doctor peered in quickly and saw stacked shelves holding recording disks, an empty camp-bed, an electronic notepad with fire-alarm red script on display, and a potted tomato plant in one corner.

'Come on, come on,' chided the Warden. Nat, as she had introduced herself, plainly didn't like or trust the two new arrivals. She herded them into the Communication building proper, squeezing alongside half-a-dozen other sphere residents. They barely registered on this group's collective attention, getting a quick glance before they returned to watching a bank of screens. Not a sound could be heard; the screen's volume had been reduced.

'Mizz Branson?' whispered Nat. A narrow-faced woman with a haunted expression slowly looked round.

'That's the first theatre-range missile salvo from China,' said a calm voice in the silent room. 'Going for those Russian troop concentrations on the other side of the border.'

Ace looked at the big, colourful graphics on the virtual displays, with labels carefully indicating a series of launches from Quang-Jing. Another set of pulsing yellow lines were reaching across Tibet, far into India, like the claws of a skeleton hand. There were broken blue lines reaching into China from Russia, and dot-and-dash lines coming from an island off the Chinese east coast – Taiwan? From what she could see, a field of green squares seemed to blot out the landscape in North West India – which the Doctor recognised immediately as Pakistan.

On several lower screens, the scanners showed video feeds from terrestrial broadcasts and transliterated radio scripts. There were shots of soldiers marching, soldiers digging-in, tanks, jets and big missile-carrying submarines.

The panoply of war. Marching to Armageddon, mused the Doctor. He took in the different screens at a sweep, before realising that Mizz Branson had stopped looking at the screens and now looked at both the new arrivals. Indicating outside with a flick of her head, she followed them out.

'Is it getting worse?' asked Nat, to a slow nod.

'Taiwan has joined in, and a submarine in the Pacific has hit Indonesia. It's spreading.' She looked coolly at both travellers. 'Who are these two and how did they get in?'

Virginia felt as if the pace of events was speeding up and accelerating beyond her ability to keep track of it. She looked at the central screens, the ones that displayed launch warnings, missile tracks, projected impact points, and sighed. They'd over-hauled and updated their detection software since the Iran-Israel affair, and for the moment they'd disabled "Nuclear Detonation Detected" or that would be all the screens showed.

The madness had begun unexpectedly, with a missile launch from Pakistan, when everyone had seen China and Taiwan coming to blows first. The Arcologies were the intended target; there was no deviation in the missile's flight, no post-boost course correction, only a straight track from Kahuta to near Earth orbit. _That_ had been scarey, knowing that a nuclear-armed missile was heading straight for you, and your utterly defenceless, fragile bubble in space.

Within seconds of the launch track, their permanently-present American watchdog had powered up it's on-board laser system, bounced a 0.001% strength pulse off the rising missile to accurately determine it's position in space and then fried the weapon with a gigajoule of coherent gamma rays. What a shame their American shepherd wasn't simply an old-fashioned missile-firing platform! That would have returned the missile to earth in a million pieces.

Instead the supposedly dead warhead plunged right back to Earth, squarely on top of the Kahuta launch site. Arc One listened in to the frantic radio babble in Urdu that suddenly cut off with a harsh snap, and a yield indicator blinked into place as screens focussed more sharply on ground zero. Twenty megatonnes – a city-buster warhead that would have destroyed everything in orbit over that hemisphere with a massive electro-magnetic pulse.

Matters quickly escalated. There were other fission warheads waiting to go, sitting mated with their missile launch systems, and at least two of those also detonated thanks to the original explosion. Ten million tonnes of radioactive fallout cloud began to spread downwind, driving a civilian population before it in terror and panic thanks to memories of the old Iranian death-cloud . The Pakistani military dictators promptly declared martial law – not really very different from normal daily life – and a State of Emergency. India blocked their border to prevent an influx of refugees, and mobilised, too. Then China began to sabre-rattle, and the Russians began to bristle and now Taiwan had fired missiles at Beijing and Shanghai, and an unidentified submarine had hit Djakarta with two nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The Chinese were beginning to attack the Siberian army that Russia had along the Mongolian border, NATO had gone to it's highest state of alert and the USA was at DefCon One, with their Laser Defense Grid on Full Alert. One shot fired in the wrong place –

And then Nat arrived with two bizarrely dressed strangers, people who definitely weren't crew or she'd recognise them. There were no scheduled arrivals for the Black Knight's lifting body, nor any visits from any other arcology.

It had been the Doctor's intention to obtain up-to-the-minute information from the crew, or occupants, of Arcology One, and have Ace separate from him to provide a correlational baseline for his own information. However, with the innate suspicion and acuity of the sphere's crew, wandering alone and asking questions didn't seem possible. He'd have to improvise –

Their introduction didn't go too well, until the Doctor managed to include his terrestrial alter ego, Doctor John Smith. At this Virginia stopped looking aloof, started to look more amazed and became more involved.

'I had an adviser called Doctor John Smith!' she blurted. 'Long gone now. But he warned me about what might happen in the Little Crash and the Big Crash, and – and - ' her voice broke. 'To pay attention to other Doctor John Smith's. I thought he was being figurative.'

She looked around, at the giant all-encompassing world-city that girdled Arcology One and felt sad that her ancient adviser didn't last long enough to get Upstairs.

'We're a bit out of touch,' explained the Doctor. 'Nor did I ever get to walk in an orbital arcology before today.' His tone had a touch of the wistful, made all the more appealing because his expression was sincere.

Virginia looked surprised.

'Out of touch?' she queried. 'Even M3 know what's going on Downstairs!'

'Quite! Would you mind showing me around your splendid Bernal sphere and updating me? My trusty companion will stay here with your redoubtable Warden, if you wish.'

Closing her eyes, Virginia took stock of the situation: the unravelling nuclear shooting-match going on in the Far East could not possibly be affected by anything the Arcipelago did. In fact the orbital environments had better hope that nobody Downstairs felt aggrieved enough to repeat what Pakistan had tried in the first place. Getting away from the claustrophobic Communications building could only do her good – ironically a fear of enclosed spaces was rare in the giant sphere, with it's trademark open-ness in terms of design and society, yet the perpetual shoulder-to-shoulder jostling with her peers had left her feeling grubby and exhausted. A stroll amongst the greenery of Arc One should put her in a better mood, even if it had to be with this small, bizarrely-dressed stranger.

'Stay here with the Warden and don't antagonise anyone,' ordered the Doctor, well aware that Ace would ignore his instructions and start to nosey around the instant his back was turned – which was what he wanted, without wanting to say so in front of the Warden and the senior Founder.

'Let me show you the inside of Arc One,' began Virginia, making a sweeping gesture that took in the whole sphere, one which denoted long practice demonstrating to visitors. 'We intend to establish a repository of information here, with sufficient staff to implement that information in a practical environment when we return to Earth.'

Taking advantage of a pause in the conversation, the Doctor jumped in.

'Ah, yes. Return to Earth. When do you see that happening?'

For a minute, Virginia hesitated. There were so many, many variables inherent in that simple question.

'Less than a generation. Twenty years at the most, maybe twenty five - perhaps even thirty in extremis. No more that that.'

'And in the meantime you continue to practice the best of what Earth has to offer.'

Virginia passed her hand across the heavens.

'Exactly! We have a garden society here, Doctor. Arranged in perfect order, to a definite end, according to exactly specified lines. A garden society,' and she threw that arm gesture again.

'Lots of greenery,' commented the Doctor, drily. He knew the reasons why.

'Yes, for three reasons. First, as you know, they absorb carbon dioxide. Secondly, even more importantly, they photosynthesize and produce oxygen. And lots of them are edible food crops.'

There were stands of trees, small copses, pines, firs, shrub oak, maple – all engineered to grow to an apparent maximum height of three metres. Apple orchards, pear trees, cherry and olive trees in neatly-maintained clusters. Virginia pointed these out across the inverted hemisphere. Bamboo, hemp and alfalfa grew in dense, fenced-in areas with only a narrow cruciform of tracks leading into them to allow access for harvesting or irrigation .

'Harvested for textile and construction?' guessed the Doctor. Virginia nodded and began to walk slowly onwards, leading her "guest". The path beneath their feet looked like cork, and yielded. When he bent to peer closely at the material, it turned out to be a treated plastic. They used a lot of plastic here. Doubtless recycled it, too.

To their right, a small stream ran along a dark-grey artificial bed. The Doctor craned to look at it, and asked if they could span a small bridge that reached the other side. He spotted occasional dark holes in the stream bottom.

'Let me guess – those holes lead to a pumping system that circulates the water, preventing stagnation?'

'Yes,' replied Virginia. Without an uphill or downhill the water would only ever evapourate if they didn't keep it moving. She indicated low-rise structures on their right that spread over a hectare, all made out of a rigid yellow stressed polythene. To the casual eye they looked like a child's construction kit enlarged a thousand times.

'Living quarters for crew. This is New Hampstead.' She turned to look at him directly. 'Er – you didn't want to look inside, did you? As private quarters - '

'Oh, no, no. Just the exterior. You group living quarters according to whatever specialism their crewmembers practice?'

'Yes!' replied the Founder. 'How did you know that?' Hardly any of the VIPs and experts lofted for a tour of Arc One after the Little Crash understood that. New Hampstead sat around a set of medical suites and laboratories, the inhabitants being doctors of different specialisms, nurses and paramedical trades – opticians, dentists, physiotherapists and others. Their offspring would probably be gently inclined towards following in their parent's footsteps.

None of the inner-surface of the sphere was wasted. If there were no structures, no paths, no crops or paddies or water features, then long-leafed grasses grew on hydroponic sod, or big storage bins with dates marked into the far future stood, containing who-knew-what essentials for the coming generation.

Five minutes walk brought their gentle meandering to an enormous pond, that the Doctor knew would be relatively shallow thanks to the restrictions of the sphere's construction. A nearly transparent film suspended on ribs set into the pond's perimeter hung over it. Mysterious small ripples broke the tranquil surface.

'We have a small fish stock in the major ponds, Doctor Smith.'

'Oh. Any other animals?'

'If you look over there - ' and she pointed at a diagonal ' – that's where the cows and chickens are located. Dairy and egg basics.'

He pointed at the pond.

'The aerial film is to restrict evapouration?'

Virginia nodded emphatically. Thanks to the sheer size of the sphere, unwanted internal weather conditions that included cloud formation might take place if allowed. There were dew collectors grooved into the inner walls of the sphere to cope with condensation, which was as much as the crew wanted to happen, and air-conditioning plant to monitor and control the amount of vapour in the air.

The Doctor discovered a bench made of extruded polystyrene foam facing the pond and sat, leaning forward in that characteristic pose he had, both hands resting on the handle of his vertical umbrella, his chin resting on his hands. Virginia, slightly taken aback, sat down next to him. She'd not seen an umbrella for years and nearly laughed at it – when you didn't have weather, who needed personal rain protection?

'Don't you want to carry on with the look-and-see? There's our embryo bank, Infrastructure, and the seed vault -'

A silent shake of the head was the only answer, at first.

The Doctor felt he'd seen enough of Arcology One to decide it was a stable, well-organised environment capable of operating for decades. It wasn't as if he couldn't see it all; simply by leaning back slightly a person could witness everything across the inner surface. The only thing he'd not seen up close were silent, bulky tracked platforms that moved bales of processed hemp on the opposite side of the sphere. Doubtless electrically-powered; no use of toxic hydrocarbons in a closed environment.

'I said - ' began Virginia again, louder, getting annoyed at the feigned ignorance of Doctor Smith – who suddenly looked up with an apologetic smile, tipping his hat in acknowledgement.

'I'm sorry, Mizz Branson. Miles away. Your colony up here seems perfectly viable. What makes me wonder is why, after decades of reasonable stability bar the Little Crash, the nations of Earth abruptly decide to wage war without reason.'

The woman sat down heavily on the bench next to the little man. His short speech encapsulated hours of worried debate between crew members on that exact subject.

'You wonder! So do we all. If politics was going to break down or war break out, I always expected it in the Far East, between China and Taiwan or, perhaps in a very unlikely circumstance, China and Russia. This behaviour from Pakistan is insane.'

She caught a sudden movement at her elbow, turning to find a pair of gimlet-sharp eyes looking at her, an un-nerving experience, before continuing.

'It's never made sense. The general's junta there have always been critics of the entire Arc-ipelago, for absolutely no reason.'

'They worry about an array of spies-in-the-skies, perhaps?'

Emilia snorted in contempt.

'As if! We improved our software and sensors after the Little Crash – it was only common sense to do so. We aren't a spy satellite, still. There are dozens of satellites up in orbit that can see more than us, over a wider area and beyond any stealth measures. Why pick on us? It's madness.'

A fish jumped in the pond, making a splash and ripples that swam outwards.

'Hmmm,' said the Doctor, thinking. Up here one did have a different perspective on the Earth, just as the Earth had a different perspective about the Arc-ipelago. A paradigm began to form in his fertile imagination.

The taut silence between Ace and her escort Warden didn't last long. The woman flexed her arms, making her silvered epaulettes ripple, and sighed.

'I shall regret this. Do you want to go back into Communications?'

The regret came from her dread of seeing and hearing what Downstairs was suffering. This nuclear "exchange" had been going on for less than twelve hours and already at least eighty million were dead or injured.

'Cool!' replied Ace, with an enthusiasm that quickly turned to a queasy sense of horror when she realised what the enormous array of curved monitors inside were showing. There were more display tracks, new ones crawling across monitors towards Moscow and Saint Petersburg and Tokyo. Great swathes of Asia were blinking out in masses of green pixels, denoting radioactive fallout zones.

For ten minutes she watched in the silent room, hearing only the soft sound of anxious breathing and a subdued hum from the air-conditioner.

'Oh god,' said an anonymous watcher, in a voice loaded with quiet despair. 'The Chinese have emptied their silos and mobile launchers.'

Dozens and dozens and dozens of yellow tracks began to crawl outwards from at least six different locations on the monitor showing mainland China.

'Secret launchers,' commented another watcher, turning to glance sideways at Ace. 'The Russians missed those.'

More blue tracks began to erupt from Russian territory, and then there were suddenly green ones sprouting from the USA, and from Europe, and from three places in mid-Atlantic. One of the display screens on the left of the monitor arc suddenly blanked out, then came back on with a warning that the signal had failed.

'That was a live feed from Tokyo, wasn't it?' asked a voice. 'I'll try to pick up Yokohama instead.'

Feeling sick to her stomach, Ace blundered out of the claustrophobic room, back into open air.

She liked explosions, yes. The mass slaughter below was a whole level beyond anything acceptable or understandable. How could they do it!

Outside, she felt the crushing weight of the upper hemisphere looming over her, making her tense and fall into a near-crouch. A consoling hand on her shoulder made her look up to see Nat, the Warden, looking at her with a mixture of compassion and worry.

'I couldn't stay in there either. It's too awful,' said the officer. 'Come on, show me your strange device and keep my mind off things.'

The young woman sighed and tried to orient herself. Up on the ceiling sat a dark blue speck: the TARDIS. Ten minutes walk away.

'There it is. I don't know how you put up with this – it feels like the sky's going to fall on my head.'

To Ace, the awful dizzying panorama merely scrolled away under her feet, the sense of an imminent collapse never receding.

'You get used to it. All of us who came Upstairs had to do two weeks acclimatisation in Hungary at a special training site. We wore VR helmets that projected a hemispherical environment.'

They passed a group of people tilling a hectare of open ground, planting seedlings from containters. Several looked up and nodded at the pair.

'Don't you have robots to do that?' asked Ace. 'Or tractors?'

Nat laughed briefly, before looking back at the other woman.

'Seriously? Wow, you really are out of touch. We use physical labour. It keeps people exercised, doesn't require complicated machinery and consumes a minimum of resources.'

They continued walking and Ace wondered what the Doctor was up to. Getting into mischief, probably, and expecting her to figure out how this giant space-station functioned whilst he got to act cool and dangerous. She winced when witnessing other space-station crew walking on the "roof" above her, expecting them to drop off like falling leaves with every passing second –

Nat took pity on her charge, who was obviously completely unused to the novel architecture of the sphere.

'Where do you two come from? According to Yuri, you appeared out of thin air, materialised like magic. I know we've been Upstairs for decades, but you can't tell me they've developed that technology Downstairs.'

Ace felt a bit like a deer in the headlights. She shiftily looked around to make sure no-one else could hear before plunging into an explanation.

'Er – we come from – well, _I _come from the past. Nineteen eighty-five. The Doctor comes from the future, year eight hundred-gazillion or something. And our way of getting about looks like a police box, except it isn't.'

Nat stopped in mid-stride, looking at her companion with suspicion and scorn.

'You're pulling my leg! Okay, okay, don't bother if you don't want to tell me.'

Briefly, Ace felt like protesting, but shrugged and carried on. The Tardis was only a few hundred metres away now, with some curious crew hanging around it and getting worryingly close. Fruit trees bedded in hydroponic troughs obscured their final approach until Nat called out to the people clustered around the familiar blue box.

'Hey, get back from that!'

Ace recognised two of the people as those she had encountered initially: that big, ruddy-faced man and the small, narrow-hipped woman with long hair. Other people stood and looked at the big blue box, muttering to themselves.

'Nat, this thing isn't what it looks like,' called the woman. She indicated off to one side, where a stack of tools lay. 'Yuri hit it with a shovel and didn't even scratch it.'

Briefly, Ace felt a touch of what her mentor experienced about offensive actions against his timeship: anger.

'Did you plonkers try to damage the TARDIS!' she shouted. 'That's our ride home!'

The woman looked at her with a wary eye.

'Stop attacking it and move away,' warned the Warden. 'All of you. Move away!'

Up close, the TARDIS displayed no unusual signs of assault with edged tools. The big man gestured with a shovel.

'Nat, I tried to knock a piece off for analysis. You can't knock anything off! This thing looks like painted wood but it's more like – I don't know - a kind of fantastically hard ceramic.'

Ace rested on her laurels as the bewildered Warden inspected the timeship at close range. A good ten minutes of inspection resulted in Nat returning to her with less disbelief apparent.

'Okay, okay, this thing is clearly beyond human technology. _Clearly_. So I believe what you said about you and your boyfriend not being from – from - what? What? What is it!'

Ace doubled over at the crack about her and the Doctor, a long laugh that carried on beyond what she initially felt. When the laughter stopped and her eyes started working again, she looked up at the annoyed Warden.

'Boyfriend! Right tent, wrong desert. Ah. Okay, okay, you want a sensible answer. I already gave you one and you thought I was taking the mickey.'

'Let's move on,' hissed Nat. 'We're drawing an audience.'

They were, indeed.

Ten minutes later they stood on the far side of the sphere, able to see a minute blue dot that attracted other minute black dots the way ripe fruit drew flies.

'Just tell me this. You don't wish us harm?' asked Nat.

'Blimey! Of course not!' gasped Ace. The whole ethos of the Doctor, his travels, and his companions, was to do the right thing. Even, Do The Right Thing. 'There's this lot of space-refugees in the thirty-first century who were inspired by you people, which is where the Doctor first encountered you before meeting me and me asking him about the Wirrn - '

Nat tuned out the supposed explanation as being more bizarre exposition from the newly arrived stranger. Privately she felt that this pair were genuine. Nobody could invent a story so silly and expect to be taken seriously! The question was, were they genuine lunatics or genuine helpers?

'What are you here for?'

This put Ace on the spot. She knew that an hideous intercontinental war had broken out below them, where millions died every hour, so how could she explain that she and the Doctor were here to better understand how the holocaust came to be?

'To find out what's been happening on Earth. You have a different perspective from up here.'

Nat nodded. Yes, they certainly did. A permanent awareness of how fragile their arcology really was, let alone how fragile Earth and all upon it really were.

Ace looked out at the Earth as it swooped across the transparent panels above, feeling a lurch in her stomach – when you saw that big blue planet swirling across the heavens, it brought home to you that the _sphere_ was rotating.

'Can I see the other space stations?' she asked. Nat looked unsure.

'Not literally,' she warned. 'Only via remote pickups on the outer hull. The astronomy section have our only real telescopes and guard them jealously. Wait – come with me.'

She led them off at a tangent, over the spongy plastic paths and to a cluster of buildings decorated in green and white swathes of colour, a miniature low-rise township introduced as "Tadcaster", home to the Wardens. Then up a narrow flight of stairs to a doorway obscured by a draped sheet of thin textile. Throwing a switch brought hidden lights to life.

Ace scanned the small room, which housed basic amenities – a frame bed, shelves, a cupboard, a desk and a computer with screen.

'My home from home,' explained Nat. Ace looked at the coloured disks stacked on the shelves, in substitution for real books.

'Er – a bit sparse,' commented the young woman, cautiously, in case the Warden took offence.

The older woman shrugged.

'I'm not big on possessions. And I spend a lot of time in our Common Room.' She turned on the computer and waved her hand over a pad in front of the device. The screen came to life and ran an application that showed local space, with nine objects labelled and numbered. Nat pointed at one labelled "BranMan01".

'That's us. Arcology One.' She pointed out two more distant spheres, both smaller than Arcology One. 'Those are the American ones, California and Washington. Smaller than us, about nine thousand people in each. Unlike us they took a whole lot of politicians along, but we still get along for all that. Regular shuttle exchanges once a quarter.'

Naturally nosey, Ace pointed to the biggest sphere.

'Who owns that?'

'That's the Chinese one. Nobody knows anything about it, or how many people are aboard. The Americans sent over a robot camera and – well, it got blown up. No signals in or out. We don't even know if their population is still alive.'

Both digested this information silently. Nat pointed out the most distant sphere.

'That's the joint Russian-Japanese-Taiwanese sphere. Structure built by the Russians, so it'll withstand an atomic blast, and the interior fitted out by the Japs, so it makes us look stone-age.'

There was also a modest EU Bernal Sphere, and one put up by the UN, which Nat shook her head over.

'They had a power-struggle in that one. A couple of hundred dead before it got resolved. And they keep losing atmosphere. A real rush job.'

Predictably Ace wanted to know what the smaller images were.

'Those are the ASEAN and Argentina-Brazil-Chile ones – still under construction. I guess they'll never get completed now.'

It struck Ace that all the spheres were exactly the same in design, if differing in size. That couldn't be a coincidence and she made an assumption that the Doctor would have nodded approvingly at.

'All these space stations look the same, don't they - do they all come from Arcology One's design?'

Nat beamed proudly.

'Yes! After the Little Crash every government around the world started bleating for our Bernal Sphere design and all the test data, the trial-and-error stuff, what we'd discovered whilst up here – everything. So we gave it all away, for free. Now here we all are.'

She closed that application and stared at the screen.

'There's no telling what'll happen to M3, either.'

There, thought Ace, again, that mention of "M3" as if she ought to know what it was.

'What's this "M3" you talked about? You mentioned it to the Doctor before.'

Nat looked at her with wonder.

'You really aren't from here and now, are you! Ace, there are illiterate peasants in the Mekong Delta who know all about M3!'

'Yeah, well, I'm not one of them,' grumbled the young woman.

M3 happened to be shorthand for NASA's **M**anned **M**ars **M**ission, twenty astronauts currently sitting on the Red Planet, exploring. They had supplies to last a year there, and because of the distance and isolation they were capable of returning home without any Earth-based assistance.

'Enough of the misery!' announced Nat. 'Come on, I'll take you to the common room and introduce you.'

Not overly fond of authority, Ace felt a touch of foreboding about meeting a clutch of officious semi-police on their home turf. The common room occupied the central quadrangle of Tadcaster, a single building noticeably larger than the surrounding domestic apartments. Once again the entrance consisted of a doorway – double-sized – covered by a swatch of white-and-green fabric. Once inside, a raucous chorus of whoops and catcalls came from the slightly dimmer interior.

The noise came from a crowd of men and women wearing leotards or the silver-ringed coverall, who were fringing a set of circular mats, where two other women, both sweating furiously, were busy throwing each other around with moderated violence. Another third person danced around and watched them closely, darting in to slap one of the contestants – entirely at random, from what Ace could see.

In stark contrast, the other half of the room consisted of low couches, low tables, computer stations and wall-hangings, separated from the boisterous event by a thick curtain of transparent plastic. The chill-out section, of course –

- a whistle blew, coming from the third person on the mats, the dancing non-combatant, and Ace realised that she was the referee. Both fighters stood and bowed to each other, and the meeting dissolved into laughter as people split up to go and punish themselves on exercise bikes or weight machines.

One of the fighters, a stocky, dark-skinned woman with close-cropped hair, came towards Nat and Ace, heading for the exit, then stopped to look at the young traveller.

'Who's this?' she asked.

'Ace. A sight-seeing visitor from Downstairs. Ace, this is Veronika. Look after her for a minute, will you? I need to post information to Tab about her and the Doctor or they'll get bothered endlessly.'

The new introduction waved Nat away and looked back at Ace again.

'So – you lot are the law around here?' asked Ace, to break the conversational silence. Veronika frowned.

'We administer the Charter, if that's what you mean. We lead in physiotherapy, diet and exercise advice and training.'

'Diet!' said Ace, surprised. 'Diet police?'

'Hardly. This isn't Earth and people need to keep muscle tone and mass or they'll probably die when we go back Downstairs.'

The mixture of duties seemed puzzling to the young woman. She changed the subject.

'When do you go back?'

Veronika sighed, swapping the towel on her left shoulder to her right shoulder.

'When everything's calmed down. Less than twenty years, I hope, so I can still find my relatives – _if_ they're alive.'

'Where do they live?'

'Lord, you do like to ask questions! In Berlin.'

Nat returned from behind the plastic curtain.

'Come on, before Nika puts you on a training regime.'

Despite her apprehension, the Wardens actually seemed a pretty decent bunch, more used to interpreting and applying the provisions of the Charter that every person on the sphere had signed, than breaking up fights or arresting people. Fights did happen, rarely, since a Warden was never more than ten minutes from wherever it occurred. Then, too, Arc One didn't have alcohol. The twenty-first century used a substance called "prosohol" that mimicked alcohol's effects without the nastier side-effects. No Friday night brawls or hangovers. Anyone who did end up violating the Charter got the worst tasks – mucking out cattle-pens or servicing sewage and waste systems.

There were significant omissions amongst those selected in Arc One: no military or politicians, no lawyers, no management or consultants. The Wardens were the closest thing to any kind of armed force, and even they didn't carry weapons – hence the unarmed combat.

A call came in on Nat's Tab, from Virginia Branson. Could Ace meet the Doctor back at the Tardis?

'Is this goodbye?' joked Nat, to a rueful look from Ace which hinted at more than words could communicate.

'Probably,' she replied. 'We tend not to stick around for very long.'

The Doctor, predictably, bundled her into the timeship without much fanfare. There were still local residents watching the remarkably unremarkable blue wooden object after all, who might be puzzled about how it vanished into nothingness and speculate endlessly –

Ace peered at the Timelord over the central console. He hadn't set the controls for any particular location, instead triggering the dematerialisation circuitry before standing and looking intensely at the rising and falling rotor, the Tardis's wheezy, aged operation running before him.

'Perspectives,' he mouthed, barely sounding the words aloud. He looked up at Ace, and his normally twinkling expression displayed a sombreness entirely out of place.

The young woman cocked her head to one side, wondering if he expected her to try and fill in the gaps, use her sense of logic and calculation the way he always nudged her to –

'I bet you mean that blokes up here don't think the way the people "Downstairs" do. Up here – "Upstairs" – they can't take for granted all the things that people Downstairs do.'

He threw his hat with uncanny accuracy onto the elaborate umbrella stand, then doffed his coat, standing in the garish tank-top he seemed to love beyond reason.

'Half-right, Ace. Half-right. I suspect that the problem is that people Downstairs – and the term "people" is one I use loosely – do indeed see things differently. I rather think we are going to venture into the near future's near future,' burbled the Doctor, as if nothing important or strange had happened.

'Eh? Come again?'

Her mentor looked over the time rotor with amused eyes.

'Dorothy! How long did our recent hosts expect to stay in orbit above Earth after the Big Crash?'

Struggling to recall exactly what that pumped-up bulldog Veronika claimed, Ace fell back on a generalisation.

'Oooh, about, ah, twenty years. At the most.'

'Very well. I was told that, too. By the law of Rassillon's Diary, I invoke the multiplicative indices of between one hundred and one hundred and fifty per cent.'

Ace recognised this for the whimsical nonsense it was. She sneered in silent amusement.

'Alright, alright! Spare me your silent condemnation! I merely intend to return to Arcology One in the near future. Forty years into the future, to give us a decent margin of error. Once we arrive in a deserted sphere, I will move backwards one year at a time, until we discover when the occupants return to Earth.'

'Sounds pretty straightforward,' agreed Ace.

'Simplicity itself!' beamed the Doctor, hugely mistaken if innocently sincere.


	7. Chapter 7

INTERPOSIT TWO:

It had taken the Lithoi a great deal of covert effort, planning and hard work, but their plans had finally come to fruition the year before: nuclear war in the north, followed by an artificial plague. Their brief was to cull the local population back to a maximum of fifty million whilst ensuring that the planet remained fit to occupy. Yes, their contract had been very specific about that part "fit to occupy".

Of course no plan went exactly to expectation. Far too many humans had survived, certainly far more than predictive modelling had calculated, although that could be remedied at any suitable time in the near future. Nor had the arcologies been destroyed. Hardly a concern, since the space colonies had no means of returning to Earth anyway.

Their current focus concerned the microbot remedial programme underway in the Northern Hemisphere. Progress was slow, like all Lithoi strategies. That was genetic inheritance for you.

Deep in the bowels of both the earth and their ship, a small group of the senior reptilians were gathered to discuss how the removal of radioactive fallout was faring. Their conversation consisted of short bursts of "speech" – computer modulated variations on hissing and clicking – and long pauses in between. What might have been a thirty minute session amongst humans went on for over eight hours between the Lithoi, despite their computer communication's predictive speech modelling. Genetics, again.

Finally, the first item on their agenda, that of the microbots, had been resolved. Uniform agreement was that the schedule for rehabilitation was on track, due for completion in one hundred Earth years. One of the unforeseen side effects of the clean-up was that human communities were beginning to thrive again. A cull loomed in the future, discussion reserved to another meeting.

The second agenda item concerned the locals, humans and wildlife both.

'The wild dogs have continued to evolve beyond baseline intelligence,' warned Arkan 22. 'I present evidence.'

Swivelling his head to one side brought his collar into line with the wall monitor, which obediently came on.

'This is film from the flying eye,' added Arkan 22. High-definition pictures of the Nullarbor Plain flashed into view, from the perspective of a camera at least fifty metres up. The picture changed to display infra-red, shown in a pale pink, with sparse red objects showing wildlife, then back to normal again. Arkan 22 froze the picture and used his collar's laser spot to indicate a blurry black object on the plain.

'This is one of their scouts, watching from beyond our perimeter.'

'It does not show up in infra-red,' observed Nilkan 34.

'No. I conjecture it has coated itself in loose earth or mud to prevent being detected.'

All heads turned to face the low-set silver table, a habit they had when thinking. After a second's contemplation (or five minutes in human terms) they began speaking again.

'Is it possible that a pack overwhelmed Tulkon 125 and Gilkon 670?'

Arkan 22 unfroze the film, which showed the flying eye darting down to burn the hidden dingo into ash. A sensible precaution, just in case, and the Lithoi seniors had been wary of the dingos since the recent disappearance of two lesser workers.

However, when the eye swooped back up again, a distant racing speck on the horizon proved to be another dingo, rapidly lost to view.

'That was a redundant back-up scout. They will have reported back to the pack.'

'Are these wild dogs a threat to worry about?' asked Nilkan 34. Arkan 22 dipped his collar, a sign of negativity or disagreement.

'No. Our mission has lost more workers to precipitation than to animal attack, however evolved.'

This was true. Any Lithoi caught outside by atmospheric precipitation tended to suffer fatal panic attacks, even when they knew hermetically-sealed suits protected them. Less genetics, more social history.

'I thought it interesting. They will provide the new occupants with a more varied hunting entertainment.'

'What of the human littoral communities?' asked Orskan 94. They all deferred to Miskan 54, the acknowledged expert on human societies in the post-apocalypse era.

Miskan 54 brought up a display of the Great Australian Bight, limning the human coast townships in blue. His laser spot ran across the entire length.

'These settlements are being kept to a low level of technology, insufficient to harm us even if they did know of our existence. The flying eye destroys any attempts to construct electrical equipment. Enslaved humans help to keep us informed and the others ignorant.

'They present no threat to our plans.' Once again, sincere but hugely mistaken.


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER SIX: Same Old Scene

There had been warnings from the Doctor before they arrived in 2105. The sphere might be a gutted derelict, stripped of everything usable and left to die slowly in the heavens. Or, it might have been stripped internally but left intact, just in case a future refuge was needed by humanity's survivors. Then again, it might be completely intact, merely having lost it's inhabitants.

What neither she nor the Timelord expected or anticipated, a fourth option, showed proudly on the Tardis scanner: exactly the same perspective as the one they had departed forty years previously, complete with busy agricultural workers and slowly-moving electrical carts.

'Have we really moved forward in time?' asked Ace. The Doctor took a moment to reply, focussed as he was on the monitor's display.

'Eh? Of course we have, Ace! What, you think the Tardis is unreliable? Forty years, to the second.'

She stood alongside him and copied his pose exactly.

'Because, you know, it looks dead similar to what we left.'

Muttering dark imprecations under his breath, the Doctor opened the Tardis doors and they both walked out into the pseudo-daylight of Arcology One.

Green hydroponic grasses grew underfoot, and the Tardis had managed to land exactly within the footprint of a bamboo embrasure at the very centre of this greenery. The travellers hopped over the miniature fence, turning to see that a laminated plaque declared "Site of the Original Materialisation".

'Ooops. We seem to have created history instead of merely observing it,' whispered the Doctor.

Nearby workers grubbing in hydroponic underlay or with bags of harvested crops stood and pointed at the new arrivals.

'And we're making it now!' exulted Ace. 'Cool!'

'Ace!' came the predictable scolding. 'It is nothing of the sort!'

Their arrival and reception this time was far less problematic than their earlier arrival forty years ago. For one thing, the Tardis had managed to arrive in _exactly_ the self-same plot that it had arrived at forty years ago : the bamboo-striated enclosure marked that remarkable event. Secondly, everyone of any importance had already been extensively briefed on the strange, time-lax travellers who might turn up again. Lastly, they were a welcome change from the dull routine of normality.

Davros peered nearsightedly at the Tab's screen. If you excluded the scratches and scuffs on the display casing, it seemed to mention The Doctor, Ace and Tardis. All three entities from the long gone, long distant days of the first generation.

Yet his grandfather, amongst other VIP's of that era, had deemed this trio so important that they had been written into the Charter, that essential instrument of living Upstairs. As an adviser to the Founding Families, he knew all the details of the Little Crash, the Big Crash, the First Materialisation, the Lunar Mine, all the minutiae of life Upstairs. Never, not once, had he ever imagined that those semi-mythical travellers from the past would turn up in his present.

Yet they were here now. They had to be dealt with, before they disturbed all the agricultural work and transport schedules.

'Warden nearest 22-15 Enclosure, please escort the two new arrivals to my suite.'

To anyone who had grown up living inside Arcology One, the differences between the sphere's interior four decades ago and the present day would have gone un-noticed. To Ace and the Doctor, courtesy of a time-jump, the differences were obvious and novel.

There were more of the boxy little villages, and their housing units now carried extra storeys. Nor was that all; an air of shabbiness hung over things, a sense of wear and decay. More clouds hung in the air between the far wall, making the vista softer and less distinct than before. A panel in the transparent strip overhead had been replaced by a single opaque sheet, which the Doctor recognised as a failed laminate panel, probably broken by meteorite impact, where the inert filler had turned to hermetically-sealing foam.

Their escorts were two Wardens, who asked excited questions about who they were, really, and were they, really, the same mystery visitors who'd arrived here all that time ago, and had they been to the future –

'Ah! "Lichfield". Where the descendants of the Founders live?' guessed the Doctor, trying to avoid the inquisitive chatter of their escorting Wardens.

'It's multi-disciplinary,' said one Warden, a bit huffily. 'They don't live here without working. Emilia Branson is a vet, and her brother is a botanist. Christos Abramovitch works with the optics people – the opticians and the astronomers.'

'Then you must be a Barclay,' guessed the Doctor, accurately. The Warden, a pale-featured young man with a faint moustache, stopped talking in surprise.

'How did you know?' he asked. Ace sniggered in amusement and tapped the side of her nose.

'Never mind that – Mizz, and Merr. This is Doctor Haritanian's residence,' said the other Warden, indicating a single accomodation block. They departed, and both began to argue in earshot whether the Charter would need to be amended again.

An attempt had been made to decorate the unit's exterior with purple, a long time ago, and the paint had faded to a dull pink. The usual curtain of fabric, dyed with that same faded purple, swung over the doorway. A sunflower in a pot sat in a window.

'After you, Ace,' said the Doctor, holding the curtain aside.

'Why don't they bother with doors?' she whispered, before taking in the room. Unlike Nat's barren apartment, this one had shoulder-high partitions, lots of computers, beanbags and subdued lighting. A dark-complected man stood up from further within the divided area and waved to them. He wended his way to them and looked them up and down. His face relaxed from a frown, tired lines around his eyes vanishing for a second. His one-piece coverall displayed no extra decoration – unless the stethoscope draped around his neck counted.

'Doctor Smith,' he said, bowing and offering a hand. They shook. He turned to Ace. 'Dorothy,' again the bow, but this time he kissed her hand, making her jump a bit.

'She prefers "Ace", actually - ' replied the Doctor, leaving a gap.

'Doctor Davros Haritanian,' said the man, making Ace catch her breath. The Doctor's – _her_ Doctor – eyes twinkled.

'It's a common Armenian first name for males, Ace. _Barev dzez_,' he replied to the other, who blinked.

'Oh! _Barev dzez_. Oh, - _vonts eks_?' and he laughed. 'I'm sorry, I hardly ever speak Armenian now. My accent's probably gone. Please, come and sit down.'

To Ace, this introduction to the future sphere felt completely anti-climactic. The subdued lighting and partitions made it feel like an office. The chairs, all bamboo weave, only detracted from that a bit.

'Can I get you a coffee?' asked Davros. When they nodded he disappeared to the back of the housing unit, clanked about with cups and water and came back with some excellent ground coffee.

'I expected instant,' said Ace, smacking her lips to remove the coffee moustache. 'Mmmm!' The Doctor by far preferred tea when making drinks and she made the most of this deliciously creamy cup.

'Instant coffee?' asked Davros, puzzled, and Ace realised this was a man who had never set foot on Earth in his lifetime, never known the essentials or luxuries of a time before the Big Crash.

'Tut, now, Ace!' cautioned the Doctor. 'Think it through.'

When she did, the equipment and chemicals needed to process coffee beans into an instant powder meant the alternative – a simple hand-cranked grinder – won out for this environment.

'Perhaps you can explain why you are here, Doctor Smith?' asked Davros, the very model of polite concern.

In one of his characteristic poses, the Doctor steepled both hands and rested his chin on them.

'I didn't expect to find any inhabitants left living in Arcology One, Doctor Haritanian - '

'Oh, please, call me "Davy". Nobody bothers with the formal address. Sorry, please go on.'

'My last conversation happened to be with Virginia Branson, who didn't expect you to be Upstairs for more than twenty years. Thirty at the very most. For good measure I jumped forty years into the future – which is your present – and – well, here you still are. All ten thousand of you, at least.'

Davros leaned back in his bamboo chair, making it creak, and sighed, a very intense and profound sigh. He stared into his coffee for a second, arranging his thoughts before making a reply.

'Here we are indeed, Doctor Smith. Not by choice, I assure you. Our population is up to nearly twelve and a half thousand, well beyond what the Sphere was designed to cope with. Our ability to recycle declines year-on-year. Cannibalising the Eden sphere has helped us and the others to last longer than we ought to but collapse is inevitable within a decade, within five years probably, unless we return to Earth – and we cannot do that, seemingly.'

Cocking his head, a motion emphasised by his hat, the Doctor leaned forward. Davros carried on.

'Ironic, eh? The intent was to return to Earth using any available shuttle facilities, except the Great Northern War prevented that. Every shuttle site on the planet was hit by nuclear weapons. If I didn't know better I'd say it was deliberate.'

'Even sites in the Southern Hemisphere?' asked the Doctor, now getting more interested and leaning forward: Ace recognised the signs of him scenting trouble.

'Oh yes. Dedicated shuttle sites, aerospace terminals, major airports, military airfields, completely gone. One hundred and sixty eight targets, all hit, some of them twice. The Human Salvation Project calculated a worse-case scenario in case of a global war, that as many as seventy would be destroyed. Not all of them!'

'That doesn't make sense,' commented Ace. 'That means nobody in orbit can get down, including the ones sent up by the people who'd be firing those missiles.'

Davros nodded in silent agreement.

'Demented, I agree. Virginia had a couple of crew who were both, er, shall I say "excessively knowledgable" about nuclear weapons and warfighting and they felt certain the destruction was deliberate. There is only one shuttle-enabled site in the world, in Texas, and it took the Americans five years of non-stop work to prep it. Nevertheless, that is the situation as it stands. Ah – well, actually it's rather worse than that.'

Naturally both travellers were both interested. Davros quailed under their scrutiny.

'Where to begin? Okay, spare me a second, please, I've not had to explain this in detail to anyone before.'

He began. After the appalling destruction of the war Downstairs began to diminish, not to fully cease for another five months, the orbital arcologies had come to a mutual agreement about co-operation (except for the Chinese sphere, which sent out a threatening looped broadcast for a week before stopping). The combined efforts of the spheres had created a mine on the Moon, where they extracted metal ores: iron, aluminium and titanium. Water-ice harvested from shadowed craters had helped them to boost their length of survival, being split to provide oxygen, or used in irrigation. The Arc had been the leaders with a rocket vehicle called "Pangolin" that had been designed to land and take off from the Moon. The mine itself was a large structure built from "lunakrete", the lunar regolith mixed with water from that same versatile ice, to produce structural bricks that were bonded together with more lunakrete. An internal, inflatable, triple-layered plastic bubble provided a breathable atmosphere, and the sun provided endless free solar power to fire the smelters and furnaces.

It took them a long time, a considerable investment of energy and materials, but Arcology One had built three ballistic gliders for re-entry and landing. A landing site had been selected – South Western Australia. The island continent had escaped the destructive effects of the war almost totally. Thus, the first glider would land and remain in contact with Arc One, communicating with the locals, seeing if they were friendly, neutral or hostile. Given time – a long time! – the population of Arc One would be brought down.

Davros looked sad and anxious, and Ace expected to hear that the glider crew had been slaughtered by paranoid locals.

'They landed near a place called Forrest, population about two hundred or so. It used to have an airport that died off before the Little Crash thanks to economics, so there was a nice long flat area to land safely on. The locals were friendly – wanted to know everything about us, how many there were of us, what state we were in – they were desperately keen when dentists and aspirin were mentioned! Everything was going well, and then the radio link suddenly died.'

'Oh?' said the Doctor, quietly. 'Were they just setting your glider crew up for an ambush?'

'No, we didn't think so. We spoke to some of the locals over the radio link. They seemed genuinely keen on our arriving, especially when we mentioned things like dentistry and anaesthetics. Even worse came with the second glider. They selected another landing site, closer to the coast and we tracked them down to five thousand metres – and then they blew up in mid-air.'

This last phrase fell with all the force of a hammer, creating a sudden silence.

'You know this because?' asked the Doctor. Davros peered at him, trying to determine if the question was genuine.

'Because we followed their track all the way down, given what happened to the first shuttle. As I said, blown up in mid-air. So suddenly they didn't have time to send a Mayday. I'm not a military expert, nor do we have any such thing aboard Arc One, but that frightened me. Killer technology and no qualms about using it.'

Ace darted a look at her travelling companion, who sucked the inside of his cheek and nodded ambiguously .

Davy hesitated before continuing.

'Another odd thing. Inexplicable, really, given physics and radiation and what we know of it. The background radiation count in the Northern Hempisphere has been steadily declining over the past few years, to the extent that it would be habitable again in less than a hundred years, when all the theoretical and practical models insist it should be a wasteland for millenia. The survivors up in that hemisphere are blossoming.'

'That's a good thing, surely!' interjected Ace. Davy looked at her and shrugged.

'Is it? Why isn't the world behaving the way it should?'

For a long pause, the Doctor looked at the floor.

'I wonder, could I have a look at your archived logs of scanner records from when the Great Northern War broke out?' he asked. The urbane Armenian looked taken aback for an instant, before recovering.

'I suppose so, if you really want to. It's not easy watching, Doctor Smith, seeing a billion people being killed.'

'My reasons are sound,' stated the Doctor, in a tone that didn't invite debate. 'Even if they must remain obscure.' He turned to Ace. 'Care to come?'

She didn't, not really. From what she gathered from her mentor's request, he intended to scan hours of video logs of the war's outbreak, looking for something he wasn't telling anyone about, certainly not her, and he'd avoid answering if she asked –

'Er - ' she began, before he interrupted.

'Or you could inspect the last remaining glider, which would save me time. Would that be possible?'

The Armenian made a _moue_ and shrugged.

'I could have one of the engineering staff show her around. Are you EVA-qualified and experienced?' he asked Ace.

'Time-served on the Ares, the Quintos, the Deucalion and three ali – er, humanoid types,'declared Ace proudly, glad that the Doctor had chivvied her into practicing on those versions held deep in a forgotten corner of the TARDIS.

Davros looked impressed.

'You might be able to teach our engineers about space-walking! Truth be told, we do very little now, not like the heyday of the Lunar Mine.'

He called up an engineer on his Tab and asked them to come visit his suite, and to be ready for a guided tour of the last glider. Ace felt she'd been deftly manipulated into doing what the Doctor wanted without him openly saying so – once again.

Being an honoured guest – not stated by anyone overtly and he didn't really know why the honour – the Doctor got Davros as an escort to the Communications building, which had contracted back to the original single small structure. With the fall of civilisation on Earth, he reasoned, there wouldn't be a lot of communication going on, nor a great deal to watch. A small storage locker behind the building housed plastic boxes holding solid data-storage disks dating back decades, indicated by carefully handwritten signs on the boxes. He descended on a set with "2065" on the front and pulled it from the stack with glee. Davros escorted him into the dim interior of the Communications building, where three screens provided illumination and thirty-three stared outwards in neutral grey tones that indicated lack of power or input. The light picked out the features of a small, lithe young woman in a grey coverall, hunched over the control panels and reading text from an electronic display no bigger than her palm.

'Oh! Goodness! Doctor Haritanian!' she gasped in surprise and embarassment, switching off the device.

'Don't worry, Devi,' replied the older man, drily. 'This is Doctor John Smith. Yes, you heard correctly, _that_ Doctor John Smith. He wants to review a set of – well, rather depressing logs of what happened before you were born. Is anything unusual happening Downstairs?'

The young woman, who seemed to be Indian, swallowed.

'No, Doctor. Oh! I'm sorry – Davy. No. Nothing unusual. A lot of the normal low-level radio communication, strictly line-of-sight. Nobody trying to contact Upstairs, except the usual from Carslbad Crew, and they moved into radio-shadow half an hour ago.'

'Very well. Please allow Doctor Smith – excuse me? Oh, I do apologise. Please allow the Doctor to utilise all the screens to display data stored on these disks. Doctor.'

With a bow Davros was gone, leaving the Doctor to ruminate reflectively on the hiliarious irony inherent in a name. Rubbing his hands together, he beamed with childish verve at Devi, who blushed and looked away.

'Splendid! Let's get down to business, shall we? You can call me "The Doctor". I'm a visiting genius, problem-solver and all-round expert in everything. Plus, I can do this - ' and he trilled "Also Sprach Zarathustra"'s opening movement in birdsong.

If by "engineer" Ace expected to encounter a boiler-suited, oily-handed man clutching a spanner in one hand, a welding torch in the other and misogynistic rererences to gender and Page Three, she was to be disappointed. The engineer who arrived at Lichfield was male, no older than herself, had a miniature Walkman glued into his ears and boasted freckles and ginger hair. He looked her up and down in frank astonishment before remembering his voice.

'Helloo there!' he beamed at her. 'Yer new here, aren't ye? Dinna worry, gel, yer in good hands. Ah'm Alex.'

'Ace.'

'Aye, that A'yam. Whit's yer name?'

'Ace.'

'Oh!' he exclaimed, all trace of the Scottish accent gone. 'Oh. Sorry, I put my foot into it, didn't I?'

'Size Ten, Rubber Sole,' deadpanned the young woman. 'What's with the fake accent?'

Alex ran a hand through his hair and grinned before answering.

'You're something absolutely unhear of - a new face! Someone to impress with my background. I _am_ from Edinburgh, you know, and they bray on endlessly about being Scottish and retaining the heritage. And if they don't, then Dundee will.'

It took a second or two for Ace to realise that he referred to Arcology One's miniature townships or villages, whatever they were called, and definitely not the real cities.

'Does everyone up here speak English?' she asked, curious about the mix of nationalities.

'Oh yes. Some of the originals weren't very good English speakers, but most crew came from Britain. Now everyone speaks English and the other languages are a bit redundant.'

'And you've got people from all over the world?'

'Mostly from Britain but a fair amount – two thousand, I recall – from everywhere else, plus the ones from Eden. I've been asked to take you EVA and inspect Dart Three. So, we need to hike up to Preston and get suits. You're not claustrophobic, are you?'

Preston - the "North End" in a bad football pun that made her groan - happened to be where the sphere's interior allowed access to the exterior, where the curving walls met at an apex. Farmland and structures stopped abruptly fifty metres from the giant well that constituted the sphere's polar region. To Ace, it felt as if they were moving downwards into a pit; her feet tingled and her head swam when they moved onto the bare metal decking. Alex, at her elbow, tapped her on the shoulder.

'You get funny feelings here. The centripetal force, and speed of rotation. You adapt after a while.'

Shivering, Ace doubted this – and then realised, with all the clarity of an epiphany, that she hadn't felt weird or strange or had to crouch down at all on this visit to Arcology One in a stark contrast to her first time here. You could adapt!

'Stop and get your bearings,' advised Alex, coming to a halt himself.

She looked. Three airlocks breached the hull of the sphere: an eight-foot one big enough for two people to walk into; another at least ten feet by forteen; a circular one ten feet in diameter. Rails led to the latter two locks, and dollies sat on the rails. Scattered around were welding equipment, computer diagnostic testing kit, tanked oxygen, CNC lathing and routing beds, mobile trolleys piled high with tools, and odd sheets of dull grey metal. Alex walked her slowly over to a stack of the metal panels.

'Aluminium alloy, with a steel mesh woven in. We call it "Arculinium". All from the Lunar Mine.'

He pointed to a portable toilet.

'That's the fitting room for our suits. Er - ' and he blushed. 'You need to be measured naked.'

Ace rolled her eyes.

'What am I, Miss Space Idiot? I knew that already. Don't blush to death! You go first, I'll follow once you're sized-up.'

When she went in, the laser-web in the measuring booth whizzed up and down, across and back, making the tiny interior look like the world's smallest disco, before deciding which space-suit fitted her most closely.

"B15", flashed a graphic on all four inside walls of the booth.

B15 and H9, the suits selected as theirs, were old workhorses used, patched, repaired and re-used for decades. Ace didn't complain – in the industrial wardrobe where space-suits were stored she'd seen Ares suits that must be nearly a century old. Like the ones she'd tried out in the Tardis, they smelt of sweat, metal and plastic; oddly, too, of lavender – a tiny pouch of the fragrant flower buds hung inside the suit, making her recall memories of visit's to her aunt – memories that vanished as she and Alex helped each other put the cumbersome suits on, checking their seals.

I'm not here to dither, she told herself. Check one: suit integrity. All three columns in the green. Check two: oxygen. Three hundred minutes worth. Check three: communications. The external wrist pad on her left arm looked different to that which she'd practiced on; she figured out the suit-to-suit radio button thanks to the graphic and pressed it.

'Hello Alex, can you hear me?' she said, the words resounding strangely in her helmet, flat and dull. Alex gave her a thumb-up before trying his radio out.

'You got sorted out quicker than me! I'm impressed.'

She gave him a reciprocal thumbs-up, then checked for tethers and ties. The suit's restraining cable had been built into an attached reel, with a magnetic clamp, a safety grip and a length of loose cable left hanging. Two lights built into the helmet came on when she tested the wrist panel.

'We're ready to go. I need to inform the Comms people that I'm going out of the Personnel Airlock and then we can go EVA.'

Seconds later he directed them to the eight-foot airlock. A locked box with a number pad stood to one side of the doors, which Alex dialled open, to remove a physical lock similar to an Allen key. He keyed a permission panel next to the lock before palming the big green "OPEN" button. They shuffled inside, Ace feeling the strange slow tug of her magnetic boots, and a churning in her stomach that might be nerves or their position in relation to the sphere's rotation.

When the external doors opened, she felt a touch of terrifying vertigo as the distant, sparse heavens beyond swooped around. Alex must have felt a similar touch of fear, hanging back from the opening before slowly shuffling outside, onto the outer hull.

'Most of the external hull is steel, so your boots should grip. There are thether points you can use if you're worried,' said the suit radio. Being worried, Ace kept her eyes on the vast curving flank of the rotating sphere and moved from tether point to tether point.

Despite this, she was still fully aware of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun all dancing around in a circular ballet over her head, or under her head. The stars themselves rotated in a long slow pattern. Like being on the biggest, most expensive fairground ride ever. Taking a deep breath, she looked down at her home planet.

"Beautiful,' she murmured. Blue and brown and green and white, oceans and land and cloud, all in fantastic clarity unfogged by atmosphere. Then the view swung up and the sun glared at her briefly like the biggest, brightest headlight ever, before the dead, grey, stark visage of the Moon came into view, shockingly clear.

'Makes me want to get back Downstairs,' came Alex's voice. He turned away from the boxy airlock and pointed across the hull plating, to a giant grey delta aircraft that stood fifty metres away, close to the largest airlock exit. 'Dart Three.'

In fact it wasn't as large as she imagined, though still big enough to carry a bus inside. Three narrow Lexan windows looked out from the nose of the craft, a pair of skids anchored it to Arcology One, and small clusters of thruster nozzles were ringed around the nose and rear. Very basic.

Alex led her along the port side and used another key to pull a door outwards, then down. It came out smoothly on hydraulics, descended all the way to the floor and formed a set of steps for them. Once inside Alex turned on his suit headlights, retracted the door and also turned on a battery-powered convection heater before Ace could make the mistake of cracking her helmet seal – the temperature inside the hull would be lethally cold should anyone dare breathe before it warmed up. He then cracked the seal on a cylinder of oxygen stored upright by the doorway. After a few minutes Ace realised she could hear the cylinder hissing – which meant there was an atmosphere in the craft. The young engineer gave her a thumbs-up and took his helmet off.

When she did so, the chill was still enough to surprise her.

'Wow! Not very warm!'

He grinned back, showing an excellent set of teeth.

'Not one bit, eh? We keep an atmosphere in here so the testing can be done without having to wear a helmet.' Using the helmet lights as a torch, he shone the beam over thirty seats made from steel struts, with nylon cradling and straps.

'For the passengers. Up front is the flight area.'

Again, very basic in design. Two seats anchored to the floor, in front of a display panel that had a radio microphone, two joysticks, foot pedals and four displays, none of which were labelled or active. Alex showed her how it would work.

'People come in wearing a single plastic coverall with enough air for five minutes, and they all come in at once. We don't have enough spacesuits to allow everyone to wear one. The pilot sits here, the co-pilot there.'

When the skids were freed, the Dart used momentum imparted from the sphere to coast back into the atmosphere. The joysticks controlled steam released from nozzles to correct attitude, and the foot pedals worked a simple hydraulic ram that deployed stubby canard wings. When low enough the craft would touch down on it's skids, which would sequentially fracture and separate after a few seconds, slowing the Dart down sufficiently to allow it to come to a halt on it's belly. The noteword for everything about the Dart was simplicity – and it worked. The first, successful landing proved that.

'It seems a bit risky to me,' said Ace, her breath smoking in the bitter cold of the interior. Alex shrugged.

'We've run months of computer models and simulations and plastic scale models, trying different designs, tweaking what we had, that showed less than a 0.01 per cent chance of failure. Getting down in real life – I can't deny that wasn't a great relief!' A shadow crossed his face: obviously he was recalling the subsequent failure and deaths.

Ace looked around in darkness at the bare and functional interior. The only things she could see that might be a fire risk, let alone be explosive, were the fabrics that covered the seats. There simply could _not _be anything here that caused an explosive failure.

'Why use steam for changing yaw and pitch and roll?' she asked. Boiling water wasn't very efficient.

Alex noted her use of the technical terms for aircraft attitude and smiled. Either Ace was trying to impress him, or she was pretty clued-up.

'We don't have rocket fuel on tap! Hydrazine would be great, except that we have hardly any left, and that's all in the Pangolin's tanks, and we can't make it very easily. Water we have plenty of. All it takes is a high-temperature filament to heat the water and we have steam. Don't forget, these things are only designed to work once. Making them complicated or expensive would be daft.'

He indicated the floor.

'The steam chamber is right under here. About the size of both your fists together.'

That excluded steam as a cause of mid-air explosion. Ace was intimately familiar with the properties of explosives and understood a boiler that small couldn't destroy a craft this big. Design flaw?

'Okay, if your second glider didn't blow up from within, could it have fallen apart? Welds coming apart, lack of complete seals, panels coming unseated, windows breaking?'

The engineer shook his head. He hunted around in the dark for a while before coming back with a bizarre contraption that seemed part binocular, part torch.

'Inspection microscope. The mechanics went over every millimetre of welding, seven times over, with these. Those "windows" are made of spare Lexan sheets from original construction and they're practically indestructible.'

That seemed to be that. Not an accident or a design flaw. What, then?

Alex indicated that they needed to suit up again, and once more Ace stood stationary outside, looking at the whirling heavens. Alex joined her and pointed out to a distant silver spark.

'California. They can't go back to Earth, ever, whether they want to or not.'

He explained as they clumped slowly back to the air-lock. Decades ago the second American sphere had lost rotation. The crew survived, mostly, and adapted to micro-gravity, which meant none of their spindly selves could survive at the bottom of Earth's gravity well. Ace sucked her teeth at this.

'Oh, they quite like it up here. I think they'd be happy to stay _if_ they could get regular resupply shuttles, which is what the Carlsbad Crew are supposed to be working on.'

When standing back inside the sphere, Ace felt a sense of relief at breathing air that didn't come out of a bottle, and that the heavens above (or below) could be safely ignored as long as you didn't peer out of the transparent panels.

'Phew!' she gasped in relief. All the practice in musty old suits from the Tardis still couldn't prepare you for the overwhelming immensity of space, made all the more awesome by the close proximity of Earth and the Moon. 'Fantastic view, but a bit hairy getting to it.'

Alex nodded in silent agreement. It was months since he'd been out on the hull, finishing off the inner fittings on Dart Three, and the view took a lot of getting used to, again. He stared unashamedly when Ace fiddled with the seams of her tights to get them aligned properly, making her look up at him with an expression of annoyance. Men! And teenaged boys!

'Haven't you ever seen a girl's legs before!' she snapped at him. He looked back at her face, genuinely unaware of having caused offence. Having been in her company for several hours, he felt bold enough to ask what he'd wondered when they first met.

'Not really, no. Our standard issue is a single-piece coverall, everybody wears one. I was puzzled at those things on your legs. They don't seem thick enough to insulate properly. And why do you wear a kilt?'

Once more the isolated society of Arc One came back to Ace's realisation.

'This - ' with a mock-curtsey ' – is a skirt, not a kilt. Decorative female clothing, not intended to be worked in. The tights are a fashion item. They make a statement.'

Unsure of whether he was being made fun of or not, Alex tried listening.

'Not literally! Blimey, you people really are refugees from fashion, aren't you!'

He shrugged.

'We're a functional lot, Ace. Stuff like fashion didn't make it up here. Maybe when we get back Downstairs you can advise us.'

The young woman sneered in amused contempt. Ace, Fashion Director for Arcology One – no, she didn't think so!

'Who or what is the Carlsbad Crew?' asked Ace, when she'd laced up her Doc Martens properly.

'The "Carlsbad Crew" is a bit of a joke,' explained Devi, looking at the Doctor with a mixture of awe and alarm. He'd spent two hours exhaustively examining the old, upsetting data logs of the Great Northern War's outbreak, never commenting aloud yet unarguably looking for an indefinable act or event. He'd played the data on the bank of screens repeatedly, scrolling up and down, zooming in and out. Then he'd gone over the transcripts of radio communications, flicking over electronically-stored pages for another hour, politely acknowledging her presence to make sure she didn't think he was ignoring her. Then, without warning, he asked about the American's Downstairs presence.

'How jokey is it?' he asked, looking amused.

'They aren't at Carlsbad. They sent their shuttle down to Minera, in Texas, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. I – we – think it's a joke about storing things.'

'Yes, it is – the old Cold War Carlsbad storage initiative. I see! So, the Americans put a set of components into long-term preserved storage in – an abandoned mine? Enough component parts to reconstruct an entire shuttle if not two or three, and – Gulf of Mexico – oil industry – they also had equipment to begin refining petroleum into a high-efficiency rocket fuel?'

Devi frowned, convinced the stranger had been teasing her.

'You knew all along!'

Steepling his fingers, the Doctor looked benignly at her.

'Not at all. Merely an educated guess.' He smiled winningly. 'Do carry on!'

Seven years ago the Americans decided to send down one of the two shuttles docked to their spheres, to carry out the Carlsbad programme: assembling shuttles from parts stored in special vacuum vaults in abandoned mineshafts on the Texan coast. Whilst the re-assembly went well if slowly – five years – the real problem had been fuelling the shuttles. The usual high-efficieny fuels were difficult to manufacture, extremely toxic, dangerous and volatile –

'Ah – let me guess - paraffin and either liquid oxygen or hydrogen peroxide were to be used instead?' said the Doctor, unable to resist an impulse to show off.

'Kerosene, actually!' sniffed Devi. 'They've had terrible luck. Storms and explosions and theft by the locals.'

'Hmmm. I wonder, I wonder,' mused the diminutive Timelord, quietly, still managing to make Devi look at him sharply. 'Tell me, can you copy data from the old logs onto a disk I can use on a portable player?'

There was no saying where the Doctor had gotten to, mused Ace. He'd cast her adrift, if only temporarily. What he doubtless intended was for her to get a worm's-eye view of Arcology One, then report back to him when he found her again, having gotten information he couldn't be bothered to acquire. Or, more charitably, that he wouldn't be able to obtain thanks to his celebrity status.

She followed Alex back across the worn plastic paths, where the middle lay visibly lower than the kerbs, eroded by the traffic of ten thousand pairs of feet over half a century. Compared to their first visit, more people were visible on the walkways, looking like columns of ants on the overhead paths. Their marching in columns made them seem even more ant-like. Nearer to the township Ace could see other teams of workers coming back from doing manual work in the fields and orchards, bamboo thickets, hemp shrubberies and bean-sprout tanks. Logically it made sense to have even more people working on agriculture than before, since the sphere needed more food and more oxygen to supply excess population.

'Do you want to come back to Edinburgh?' asked the young engineer. 'Really, everyone would love to meet you. They still talk about the first time you and the Doctor came to visit.'

Such a reputation made Ace uneasy. The two time-travellers tried to observe history, or get it back on track, not to actually create it. She was, though, at a loose end for the moment. To Alex's open glee she agreed, and five minutes brisk walk brought them to the low-rise cluster of buildings that composed Edinburgh. Like the other townships this one formed around an inner atrium, where a knot of people in grubby coveralls worked on a big wheeled trolley, exposing the inner workings to daylight. Once they caught sight of Ace and Alex, most especially Ace, work came to a halt.

'This is Ace,' declared Alex, bursting with pride at having escorted her to the workers. 'Ace, these are Manny, Alistair, Gina, Lucinda and Garry.'

Various polite greetings were exchanged.

'What are you doing?' asked Ace, curious as ever about anything mechanical, greasy or powerful.

'Ah – she asks a lot of questions,' added Alex, to a nudge in the ribs. 'Well you do!'

Manny, who looked like a human weasel with his eager little eyes and quick manner, rubbed his hands with hemp waste and nodded at the electric cart.

'Failing to get this pensioner back into working order. Another one we'll have to cannibalise for parts.'

Expressions of mutual gloom fell on the mechanic's faces, before they descended with spanners and allen keys and screwdrivers, taking the pallet-sized vehicle apart and storing the various components in wicker baskets that ranged in size from those big as a coffin to barely egg-cup sized.

'Off to Stores,' sighed Manny. 'I'll add the list to the Overall Inventory and tell Infrasrtucture,' and they clumped off with baskets clutched in each hand. Ace and Alex watched them leave.

'More opportunity for exercise,' he said, trying for a lighter tone. Physical labour, the number of hands Arc One could put to work in general, wasn't a problem any longer thanks to the extra two thousand crew. Accomodation _was_ a problem; the night shift worked on a rota basis to ensure there were enough beds, berths and bunks free for the non-shift crew.

As Ace watched, a curious low, melodic howling came echoing across the sphere's interior. The sound an alien beast might make if it mimicked a cow, she imagined. Seconds later she began to rub her eyes, worried that being in her spacesuit or at the very polar apex of the rotating sphere might have affected her sight.

'Oh! Sorry, that was the warning call for the night-cycle, Ace. Two hours of twilight, four hours total dark, two hours of twilight.'

She looked up. Instead of the darkness of space and the actinic glare of the sun, a band of ebon girdled the arcology's inner surface: the transparent panels had been polarised to let only twenty per cent of normal sunlight inwards. One alone stood out from the black circle, a pale single panel adrift amongst the rest of the filtered ones.

Slowly, tiny lights appeared in threads and patterns overhead, and to the sides of the sphere, glowing gently like strings of luminous pearls. Irregular gaps interrupted these marching lines, baffling Ace to begin with. When larger, wall-mounted lights began to warm up and cast increasingly bright shadows across the Edinburgh atrium, she understood – the distant lights were the arcology's equivalent of streetlights. This artificial dusk view was more evocative than in full daylight, the internal illumination hinting at the sphere's sheer size, and the now permanent clouds at dead centre making the vista look hidden and mysterious. This wasn't a real night, merely the idea of one, an idea that had to be sustained to allow human minds and organic rhythms to remain in harmony with their eons old, inherited history of day and night on Earth.

The team of mechanics returned from their trip to Stores, accompanied by a Warden carrying a slung horn who chatted to Manny and exchanged electronic notes. Gina, a hefty young female fitter, diverted to Ace and Alex.

'Feel like joining a communal meal? We're getting the makings together.'

Ace nodded, happy to keep encountering novel experiences. This common room contained a series of benches, where partially completed or dismantled machines sat silent and still. What looked like space-age construction kits sat in more wicker baskets piled up in a corner, and a couple of young children were erecting fantastic vehicles from the pieces. The arriving mechanics pushed tables together, found fabric covers for them, shooed the playing children away and vanished again, leaving Ace to sit and wait: Alex refused her help and told her to sit and bide a while.

When they returned, they came carrying scuffed plastic crocks and cutlery and laid places for seven, seating Ace at the head of the table. A shuttle of mechanics brought bowls of salad, vegtables, small bread rolls, slices of processed soya, tofu and jugs of water. Pride of place went to a bowl of egg mayonnaise that the mechanics devoured greedily first with their eyes, then literally.

'That was great!' enthused Ace, supressing a burp after a solid half hour of eating. Strange how much her appetite had been sharpened by the day – until she reckoned on what she'd been doing, and realised that it hadn't been sitting down doing crossword puzzles or vegging-out in front of the telly.

'Thank you, Mizz Ace. Takes a special occasion for the egg mayo to come out,' replied Lucinda, as if the reason for that occasion was the most obvious thing in the world, or in the sphere.

The dirty dishes were whisked away and jugs of prosohol replaced the water, leading to a round of toasts where the mechanics, just as curious about their visitor as she was about them, asked questions.

'No, I come from the past. The nineteen-eighties,' she informed them, hoping this wasn't blowing her cred or the Doctor's trust. He couldn't tell her off too much, these people already knew she travelled time! 'Yup. Lived on Earth until – er, until I went travelling with the Doctor.'

'In a house?'

'Did you go on a public transport vehicles?'

'Is weather as terrifying as the books say?'

'Did people really walk around naked to get burnt by ultra-violet radiation?

She waved her hands.

'One at a time! Listen, you ask a question, I'll answer it, then I ask a question and you can answer it. Is that fair? Otherwise I'll lose my voice!'

Ace couldn't believe how many questions they had, questions that were incredibly banal to her but which picqued the eager curiosity of people who had never set foot on Earth, felt rain, ridden in a car or sailed on a cross-Channel ferry.

In turn she heard about their fears for the slowly failing arcology; the continuing decrease in ability to recycle, the machinery that broke down or wore out (no more bicycles left), population pressure on the food supply, depression and suicide becoming very real risks. This would be the last generation in orbit, because if they couldn't get back Downstairs, they would slowly perish Upstairs. Dart One and Two's failure and destruction were forbidding signs to the crew.

A new face, a big stranger, came yawning and stretching up to the common room tables, focussing sharply on Ace. The other mechanics treated the stranger with deference, making the young woman wonder if he wasn't their chief mechanic. He was old, at least fifty, plump, apple-cheeked and sharp-eyed.

'You'll be Ace,' he said, making it a statement not a question. He carried on at her nod of acknowledgement. 'Doctor Smith asked if you and I can make our way over to Lichfield straight away.'

'Did he say why?'

'No. Just that there's a meeting of Founders families and heads of townships.'

The other mechanics looked impressed at this.

'Must be important!' exclaimed Alex. 'They've not done that for ages.'

'Not since we agreed to take on part of the UN's survivors,' agreed the head mechanic. He pointed across the patchwork heavens. 'That's Lichfield. You follow me.'

He didn't seem particularly inclined to chat along the way, merely nodding a greeting back at any of the night shift workers they came across. Ace realised why the long skeins of pathlights in the heavens had random gaps – their filaments had died and not been replaced. Those remaining still gave off enough light to see where she put her feet, and the head mechanic never faltered in his progress – he could probably walk the path in his sleep.

'Do you have a name?' she asked.

'Douglas,' he replied, not bothering to turn and look at her.

'What happened to the UN sphere?' she asked after a brief pause. This time he did turn and look at her, surprise showing on his big bland face for a moment.

'Eh! What? Of course, of course. You wouldn't know. Eden. Put together in a hurry, which wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been full of people who bought their way aboard.'

He motioned her to walk alongside him.

'Here, stay in view, I keep forgetting you're not crew; we get so few visitors from anywhere else. Where was I? Oh yes, the UN sphere – "Eden". They had a revolt – incredible as it may seem, they brought weapons aboard their sphere. Guns. Can you believe it? After a year they had _another_ revolt, after which the sphere wasn't fit for habitation beyond a few weeks. The rest of the Arc-ipelago conferred and agreed to accept the survivors aboard, split up between us. Except for the Chinese, of course. The Americans shuttled the surivors about in the Martian Excursion Vehicle, and -' he stopped and looked at Ace. 'Rumour has it that some idiots tried to bring weapons aboard the MEV. It's only a rumour, but the story goes that the Americans put them out the airlock without suits.'

Ace shuddered at the very thought. Douglas carried on walking.

'The Martian Excursion Vehicle?' she asked, making the big man shake his head.

'Do you ever stop asking questions! Yes, the MEV. M3 came back from Mars ahead of schedule after taking a vote to return.'

'Manned Mars Mission!' declared Ace proudly. 'See, I do know a few facts!'

Despite himself, the chief mechanic chuckled.

The twilight gloom had been held at bay by banks of solar battery-powered lights in the central atrium of Lichfield, where chairs of dull plastic or woven wicker and bamboo were laid out in a semi-circle. A small table stood alone facing the chairs, most of which were now occupied. Ace and Douglas found vacant places and sat. Gradually all the places were taken, at which point a small figure wearing a familiar hat stood up and trotted to the centre of the impromptu lecture theatre, politely tipping his brim to those assembled before placing a laptop on the table, plugging it in to a set of wires.

'Pleased to meet you all,' he announced. 'I'm Doctor John Smith, better known simply as "the Doctor". He indicated the portable computer. 'I've got a presentation to show you. If you have any input, don't worry about interrupting,' and he brandished a scavenger microphone. 'What I have to show you is going to be very disturbing, I make no apologies for that. It may raise more questions than answers, and it demonstrates that your position here is very, very precarious.'

A whisper of conversation went around the massed audience. At the press of a button, a projection of Earth's nothern hemisphere sprang to life on the wall of the atrium's common room.

'Earth. Date: Twenty Sixty Five. Please pay attention to the schematics that display trajectories of nuclear missiles being launched and on their way.'

At the press of another button a mass of coloured traceries instantly overlaid the map. The Doctor sped the display forward ten hours and paused it.

'Pay attention to these eight launches from China,' he lectured, picking the yellow schematic trails out with a laser pointer, then allowing the log to play for another minute, zooming out to show the whole of planet Earth. The yellow trails arced slowly upwards, merely a fraction of the immense amount of coloured trails crawling and inching across the giant projection. Suddenly they vanished and the display paused again, the Doctor turning to face his audience.

'Take note of that. Those missiles were targeted at the southern hemisphere, specifically at Australia, and they were destroyed within five milliseconds, by a particle beam weapon at a distance of six thousand miles from origin.'

He zoomed in and scrolled downwards to show the great island continent. Three narrow red threads crawled inland from a point no more than a kilometre offshore from Sydney, heading for the hinterland just beyond the city, and to another two sites where explosions blossomed.

'That same mystery submarine that fired missiles at Djakarta. These three nuclear-tipped cruise missiles impacted at the sole three sites in Australia capable and equipped to launch or recover orbital shuttle-craft. Circumstantial, yet telling.'

More whispering.

'I can't locate the anti-missile beam's site very accurately, not given the trigonometric inaccuracies present in these schematics. South-East Australia, the area where your gliders chose to land. I think your problem is that you have squatters. Yes. Squatters.'

He stood back proudly, sticking his thumbs into his lapels, to a mystified silence. Recognising the problem, Ace stuck her hand up.

'What are "squatters"?' she asked, making him clap hand to forehead.

'Sorry! Illegally-settled alien residents.'

The whispering took on a confused tone.

'How can they be illegal?' asked an anonymous voice.

'Because they're not from round here. When I said "alien" it wasn't a figure of speech, it was the literal truth. You have hostile aliens with malicious intent, hiding in the Australian outback.'

If he had been less sure, or less sombre, there might have been laughter.

'What proof do you have?' asked anther voice; not hostile or dismissive, only curious.

The Doctor danced his laser spot over the wall behind him.

'Only circumstantial data as yet. Let me guess – the countries that started both the Little Crash and the Big Crash were military dictatorships?' A muted chorus agreed with him. 'Always the easiest to control. Get the man at the top and his drinking cronies and you can run the whole country.' He stopped to generate an air of drama before sweeping his hat off and gesturing to the upper hemisphere of the arcology.

'I remember speaking to Virginia Branson about perspectives, how different things look from Upstairs or Downstairs. To you and your brethren Downstairs the Big Crash, the Great Northern War, all that destruction, was madness incarnate.

'Madness - from _your_ perspective. From the perspective of our alien squatters, it was business as planned. Get rid of half the human race in a matter of months. Then came the Phage. What did people classify that as?'

One of the medical staff took the bait.

'A neurotropic, haemorraghic fever. Extremely virulent, with a very high morbidity rate. Not a naturally-occurring pathogen, so we ascribed it as a designer bio-weapon.'

A dismissive _pshaw!_ sprang to the Timelord's lips.

'Nonsense! A weapon that indiscriminately wipes out whole continents? May I point out that the Phage hit North, Central and South America, and Africa; it didn't feature elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere because that had already been thorougly devastated. I strongly suspect that the United States suffered infection because their laser defence network functioned too efficiently for our squatter's peace of mind. The only reason the Pacific and Australasia remained free from infection is because your grandparents sweated blood to find a cure. So, our squatters have by this point eliminated almost four-fifths of the planet's human population.'

In best school-child style, a hand went up in the audience. The Doctor pointed the scavenger microphone.

'Who would want to get rid of humans at the cost of creating lifeless radioactive wastelands!'

Delighted at being asked this gambit, the Doctor rocked back on his heels.

'Ah, but I think your science teams have detected an atypical decline in radiation in the northern hemisphere.' He pursed his lips, thinking hard. 'My guess is that you're seeing an overall diminution in terms of roentgens, less marked in built-up areas, with a small number of very, very intensely irradiated areas, probably centred around deep-shaft mining operations.'

From the corner of her eye, Ace caught a huddle of crew leaning in towards each other and whispering, with expressive shrugs and hand gestures. One of these people stood up to speak.

'I don't know how you knew, Doctor Smith. You're absolutely correct. The great cities are still heavily contaminated, yes. Over the steppe and the tundra and prairie the radiation has been steadily declining, for the past sixteen months. There are dangerous hot-spots in the Urals, the Ruhr, and Pennsylvania – all mining areas. Don't tell me you know why!'

'Microbots,' explained the lecturer, adopting a pedagogical stance. 'My best guess is that, were you to analyse soil samples from anywhere in the low-radiation zone, it would be thoroughly enervated by millions of microbots.' Seeing looks of partial bafflement, he clarified. 'Nano-technology. Miniature processing robots that scavenge any radioactive particles, seal them in a protective lattice of boron or silicate, then ferry them for disposal to a nice deep hole. Not exactly speedy but highly efficient.'

Looking stunned, the audience speaker sat slowly down, beginning a hasty discussion with his colleagues. At the press of a button the displayed hemisphere showed a widely scattered overlay of green pixels, an emerald blizzard denoting radioactive fall-out. Clusters hung around the capital cities, particularly dense in Western Europe, and tailed-off further away from urban environments.

'This ought to be Earth in the year five thousand, not twenty one oh five. Another salient point. May I also explain another aspect of pre-Crash behaviour you have always found puzzling?'

The whispering stopped, making Ace realise he had them exactly where he wanted them.

'Why did the junta in Pakistan hate and fear you so? Well, they didn't hate on their own account. No. They were faithfully parrotting the views of their alien masters, who feared what the Arcipelago represented – a environment completely beyond their control.'

That caused Ace to pause and think. Okay, these mysterious alien invaders blew up missiles that were heading for Australia and their alien hidey-hole. Why not blow up the arcologies too? If they couldn't control the orbiting environments, why not simply destroy them?

The audience were now clustered together, chatting and talking excitedly to each other, people throwing up arms or shaking heads in disbelief. Davy, whose voice Ace recognised, spoke up for a lot of the listeners.

'All very persuasive, Doctor, yet purely circumstantial as you admit. Why, using Ockham's Razor, should we invent an alien invasion when there are other less extreme possibilities?'

The Doctor frowned, the low-set lighting making his face look positively sinister.

'This is not an invasion, Davy. It is an infiltration,' and he dwelt on that last word, emphasising it. 'Secret. Undercover. Covert. These alien's greatest weapon is their secrecy, that nobody suspects they even exist.'

'How, exactly, do these sinister aliens move around and manipulate human beings, Doctor Smith? Or do they look exactly like humans?' asked another critic.

'Any one of a number of methods. Via projected encepholographic over-ride, which removes any need to move around. Surgical alteration, if they firstly possess a humanoid form. Remote controlled androids. A robotic shell acting as a Trojan horse. Holographic camouflage. Refractive lensing. None of which would be detectable to anyone.'

'Except you!' laughed a listener, shrinking a little when the diminutive man's gaze swung upon him.

'Except me,' he agreed. 'Since I have experience of alien squatters moving into a depopulated Earth.' Ace's memory jumped back to sitting by the River Rowley, and mentions of an even more distant future where the human race slumbered in orbit, again. The crew listening to him were puzzled by this remark. 'And nobody can deny that your second glider was blown up.'

There came a flurry of speculation about that from mechanics, technicians and two of the arcology's nuclear physicists, all trying to suggest reasons why the glider had been destroyed, until several dissenting voices interrupted, unhappy at the vicarious analysis of their friend's deaths. The Doctor paused to build up dramatic tension before continuing.

'Please don't suggest strange ideas like an anachronistic Australian death-ray, sat in the desert for forty years with an inexhaustible power source, unlimited spare parts, a dedicated radar system, generations of operators in a hermit community, all living for the moment they can shoot down your Dart.' His mocking hand gestures underlined how silly he found the desperate ideas put forward.

Ace stood up, causing the scavenger microphone to be pointed at her.

'Hi there, Prof! I went over the last glider with Alex and inspected it for any flammable or explosive materials, and there ain't none. Dart Two didn't go bang because of anything that went wrong with it.'

'Thank you, Ace,' came the grave reply.

'According to you, Doctor Smith, we'd better start looking for a different landing site, or do you expect us to slowly expire Upstairs?' asked a man sitting with arms folded, giving off an air of dislike.

'I have a better solution!' beamed the Timelord, refusing to look even slightly offended. 'I will take the Tardis Downstairs and scout around for these supposed aliens, get rid of them and solve your problem.'

He tried for a light and airy voice, well aware that his hypothesis, if true, meant the beginning of an extremely dangerous time for anyone venturing from orbit to the Earth's surface.

'How?' asked that same unfriendly voice.

'The Tardis can move in Everettian five-dimensional space-time, traversing bounded regions without needing to adhere to classical Newtonian three-dimensional geodesics. We dematerialise here - ' and he rapped his umbrella firmly on the plastic-sheathed ground 'and rematerialise there - ' pointing to the heavens with his umbrella. 'Death ray wielders need never know about my reconaissance mission.'

There were some inconsequential questions after that before the whole meeting began to break up. Davy sought out the Doctor straight away, closely followed by Ace.

'Did you mean what you said about scouting Downstairs? I mean, would you run the risk?' asked Davy. The Doctor wrinkled his nose.

'Risk! I run more risk of a bite from an Australian spider than anything these mystery aliens may try if I travel in the Tardis.' He abruptly became serious. 'Also, Davy, I really don't like asking this, but would one of your crew be willing to come with Ace and I?'

The Armenian paused in surprise.

'Willing! Doctor, there isn't anyone aboard Arc One who wouldn't jump at such a chance!'

Before any more could be said, an eager young voice interrupted.

'Me! I'm willing to go Downstairs!'

Alex sprang forward, practically quivering with earnest zeal and nearly knocking Davy over in his enthusiasm. Ace raised a single eyebrow, wondering when the mechanic had arrived at Lichfield and how much of the Doctor's lecture he'd heard, and whether he'd balanced the risks or not.

The Doctor's eyes shone with mischievous amusement.

'I haven't even explained why I want an Arc One crewmember to come with me. What if I intend to feed you to the natives?'

Ace sniggered at Alex's look of bemused surprise, then sobered up, wondering if vistas of women showing their legs off might have been an influence.

'Don't panic – I want an Arcology representative along to provide solid background information for any Australians we might need to negotiate with. You've had nineteen years of experience aboard this sphere, Alex. Ace and I have merely a few hours.'

Trusted adviser, medical doctor, amateur botanist and insufficiently hard-hearted, Davy gave in with a show of reluctance, cautioning Alex that his parents needed to be asked – not told, _asked_ – about his departure. The young Scot turned to dash before the Doctor's umbrella handle caught at his elbow.

'Bring a full tool kit with you. Be prepared, just in case. Meet us back at the Tardis.'

Davy asked if he could help provide anything for them, and offered to go through the whole Overall Inventory, which the Doctor politely refused on the grounds that the database was enormous and would take hours to scroll through completely.

'I wouldn't say no to some of that nice ground coffee,' commented Ace, cheekily and expecting a scolding.

The acid quip never came. In fact the Doctor nodded and smiled blandly in agreement, only for Ace to look at him with a cynical expression when Davy had disappeared into his lo-rise apartment.

'What are you up to? That scrounging ought to have earned me a telling-off, at least, with a sarky bit at the end.'

A sigh was her initial reply, until she linked arms and tried puppy-dog eyes.

'Oh, Ace! Tell me what you discovered about these people whilst you were amongst them, when I was looking at the most depressing satellite coverage imaginable. Go on.'

She recovered well from the unexpected request and told him what she'd seen, what she'd heard and what she understood from her recent associations, ending with a plaintive look.

Another sigh.

'Ace, Ace, I'm afraid I've been a bit scheming here.'

How unusual! she cynically mused. How actually entirely _not_ unusual.

'I was a bit over-the-top on how easy it would be to turn things around on the ground. Presenting the smiling countenance and all that.'

He looked to one side, making Ace look at him. Had he been lying? That wasn't like the Doctor – he could decieve, obscure and misdirect with mere plain truth like a maestro. Her look was returned with a rueful smile.

'Those about to – no, that's courting trouble. Ace, these supposed aliens, if they exist, have killed eighty per cent of the human race in pursuit of whatever final endeavour they've been planning, for at least fifty years. They thrive on secrecy. Us appearing out of nowhere and destroying that anonymity will render us very specific targets.'

'Right. So you need me to watch your back.'

An exasperated smile came back in response.

'Dorothy! _ We_ are going back Downstairs for the time being as an item. _You_ may be returning Upstairs sooner than you wish.'

'What!'

He tapped his right nostril in mimickry of her oft-used gesture.

'I need a person up here I can trust.' The calculating look changed to a more thoughtful one. 'I was upbeat and confident about solving Arc One's problems because these people need hope above all else. They will die up here unless a near-miracle arrives – your observation and report underlined that. If you came back Upstairs after having the alternative of remaining Downstairs it will impress them that things are not terminal, that there are options remaining.'

The nominal weight of twelve thousand people fell upon Ace's shoulders.

'Couldn't you take them all down in the Tardis!' she exclaimed, struck by sudden inspiration.

Gloomily, the Doctor shook his head.

'Shuffle over twelve thousand humans through the Tardis, Ace? The Timelords would be apoplectic. And probably carry out a retro-temporal sweep that puts everyone back where they were. No, not unless there's no other option.'

Twenty minutes later they had been given a bag of ground coffee, Alex came back beaming with pride at his parents allowing him to depart the sphere, and Davy saw them into the Tardis.

Predictably, Alex stood in silent, wide-eyed amazement once he'd crossed the threshold, and remained mute until Ace shook him back to the present.

'Hello? Better get ready for the take-off.'

The young engineer looked around wildly, even as the time rotor began it's strident and unlovely working.

'How is it bigger on the inside! Where are the seats and safety harnesses! Where has the sphere gone! Where are - '

'We've arrived,' chirped the Doctor cheerily, the time rotor grounding at cycle end with it's usual dismal _clonk_.


	9. Chapter 9

INTERPOSIT THREE:

It is a pre-requisite of nanotechnology that it be stupid. Or, perhaps, unintelligent. A self-replicating construct that utilises readily-available elements to reproduce is sufficiently a hazard not to make matters worse by giving it either a collective intellect or the ability to evolve.

So. The Lithoi's seeding programme in the Northern hemisphere of Earth incorporated billions of minute robots with inherent design flaws that ensured they became worn-out within months. They had no ability to communicate with each other or to be communicated with, to ensure that their unintelligence remained unevolved.

Thus, blindly following their engineered programming, the faithful workers began and persisted in isolating fall-out residuum, concealing it in a lattice of boron and transporting it onward to intermediate collection points, where other microbots would carry it further to specific sites for disposal. Arcology One would have been immensely impressed by the technology involved, not to mention relieved at the explanation for background radioactivity declining so rapidly.

Once or twice, decades past, scattered human communities that managed to survive and thrive in the post-apocalyptic wastelands had discovered the existence of the collecting robots. Harken 23, as head of the Lithoi's Physics wing, had ordered flying eyes to destroy the human habitations as a matter of course. The danger was that they'd communicate their discovery elsewhere, since the alien's restrictive practice of keeping human technology limited to steam and coal didn't run in the North (too labour intensive).

Harken 23, as head of Physics, had felt worried for a long time that humans might rediscover the nanobots again. In which case things would get tricky; of the original six flying eyes the Lithoi had brought to Earth, only two remained functional. Of the missing, one, they knew, had inadvertently flown into the flight path of a human HOTOL jet. Neither survived the impact. Another had vanished over the Pacific when on a mission to destroy a Micronesian island colony. Two more simply disappeared from the monitors, quite possibly as a result of overwork, fatigue and general wear – they had been used to burn up at least five hundred thousand humans, after all. Building more flying eyes meant petitioning Arkan about them, with reasons, in detail, a long and labourious process not guaranteed to succeed.

More cheerfully, besides that, their Contract was nearing completion. The number of microbots had decreased exponentially as less and less fall-out remained to be collected, which meant less chance of detection, just as the number of human settlements increased exponentially, meaning a greater chance of detection. It balanced out, to Harken's relief.

He, along with Mirskan, hadn't been able to explain adequately the sheer increase in numbers of humans across the Northern Hemisphere. They had been starting from a greatly reduced baseline in terms of population and so should have been increasing very slowly; a graph of human repopulation that Biology used as a predictor showed a long, gradual increase that took over three millennia to reach pre-Crash levels. The reality was that in less than five hundred years the humans would be back to their original six billion.

Well, let them breed! he told himself, looking at plans of the central particle beam cannon. A suggestion was abroad that they ought to be able to dismount it and use it against ground targets, which meant he needed to see if that was possible or practicable. He rotated the three dimensional display on the scanner.

Yes, let them breed. That way, when their vendors arrived to take possession of Earth, there'd be plenty of upright local game to hunt and kill and eat. Or did they eat meat? Harken wasn't sure. And he wasn't sure they ever did things for enjoyment, the unpleasant lot.

He went back to an exploded schematic of the basehip's giant beam weapon, concluding a long time later that the weapon couldn't be dismounted without dismantling the baseship itself, and doing that was probably impossible, in addition to being forbidden.

We still have two flying eyes, anyway, he consoled himself. 'And nobody at all to stop us.'

The Lithoi did not go in for dramatic literature, or Harken might have paused before committing such hubris.


	10. Chapter 11

CHAPTER SEVEN: Stranded

Adelaide's long-abandoned Botanic Gardens were disturbed by an unearthly noise, seemingly the product of a horrid mechanical howling routed via a Leslie speaker rotating at full speed. Swarms of parakeets left the branches of their roosts in temporary alarm, circling back to land when the echoes died away.

Before emerging, the Doctor carefully checked all thirty sensors that read the external environment. Radiation was up very slightly from the normal background count. Air-borne pollution had declined to almost non-existent; ultra-violet radiation was down by half, indicating that the ozone layer had been replenished. Noise – non-existent.

Quite an attractive piece of real estate, he mused, cynically. All the better for the alien realtors to sell on to whichever third party had expressed an interest.

'Alex, may I suggest a bush hat before you leave the TARDIS? You aren't used to direct sunlight and might burn, and the perspective will possibly knock you off your feet.'

Ace went to ferret around in a distant wardrobe, coming back with a slouch hat faintly stained with sweat, bearing a faded stamp on the inner liner of which only "Army Issue" could still be read.

'Couldn't find one with corks hanging off it!' she said, laughing at her own joke. The Doctor arched an eyebrow and she turned the laugh into a cough.

When they emerged into sunlight, Alex winced and shaded his eyes. There was no visible curvature of the land that he could see, everything ran off in all directions equally. Or seemed to, since they had materialised amidst a riotous jungle of flowers, shrubs, trees and grasses. Daringly, he raised his head, seeing a distinct break between land and sky –

'A horizon,' he muttered, recalling lessons from long-gone schooldays. When he tilted his head back, the sheer blank enormity of the empty heavens above made him reel. A firm hand on his elbow steadied him.

'Don't look up!' cautioned Ace, when he returned a wide-eyed gaze to hers. She felt a sympathy for him after what she'd endured to begin with on Arc One.

The two young people looked around their landing zone. A solid wall of greenery, interspersed with bright flowers, lay on all sides. Whilst not impenetrable, the near-jungle looked forbidding. Ace wondered why on earth they'd landed in such a spot, difficult to traverse without machetes. Her mentor simply stood and soaked in the atmosphere, umbrella dangling from one elbow in a pose that radiated smug satisfaction.

His pose remained unaltered for long enough to make Ace twitch with impatience, and for Alex to look at her with unasked questions in his eyes. Finally the Timelord turned round, gracing them with a warm smile.

'Thank you for being patient. I was listening, looking and smelling and it takes a few minutes to get acclimated after being in sterile or controlled environments.'

'Did you find anything?' asked Alex, just as curious as Ace.

The small figure pursed his lips and shook his head.

'At least three small fires, judging by the smoke trails, all very distant. No sounds of movement, bar the local wildlife slowly returning here after being frightened away. No smells of any petrochemicals or hydrocarbons.'

Which led him to believe that Adelaide now lay deserted and dead. It was the city closest to the Nullarbor Plain, where he believed his alien squatters were hiding, so he wanted to visit and see what the locals thought of any sneaking non-human intruders. Now there didn't seem to be any locals left.

He sighed. Well, they were here, might as well explore.

Finding a way beyond the thickets of trees and shrubs turned out to be far easier than Ace or Alex expected. The plants grew less thickly and were smaller on certain sections of ground, which the Doctor pointed out had been tarmac paths in decades past, and which naturally led to the exit.

'Phew! I'm glad to be out of that!' opined Ace. Alex nodded in agreement, having felt uneasy at the complete abandon they'd been walking amongst. 'Prof, why land in the middle of a jungle? I've got a ladder in my tights.'

He waved at the middle distance.

'That's why.'

A tragic panorama of skyscrapers, high-rise office buildings, apartment complexes and power pylons stood crumbling, covered with creeping vines, sagging with an air of solemn and funeral finality, less than a mile away. One building at least twenty storeys tall had suffered a catastrophic failure of the middle columns, leaving the two flanking remnants to lean in like a gigantic pack of cards. Trees could be seen growing on any level surface. Mosses and algaes gave the abandoned buildings a uniform camouflage of mottled olive, softening the eroded concrete, steel and brick.

The Doctor pointed with his umbrella.

'If we materialised in that area, we'd risk the noise causing a collapse of any particularly fragile buildings. In any urban area there would be a risk of sub-surface collapse thanks to sewers or subways or tube railway systems. A garden poses none of those risks. Now, let us venture forth and see what we can see.'

Ace recognised the signs of excitement – he rolled the "r" in "forth" like a Shakespearean ham. Her eyes also spotted one of the smoke columns mentioned minutes earlier, streaming upwards like a signal, atop one of the less-battered and smaller buildings. She pointed, and the Doctor gave her a nod of acknowledgement.

They walked west from the Botanic Gardens, along roads and paths long gone to seed, where vibrant plant life broke the surfaces into a jigsaw of cracked paving flags or disintegrated metalling. Coming to a major intersection where toppled streetlights lay like fallen trees, the Doctor spotted an absence where there ought to be a presence.

'Look at this,' he said, pointing to a narrow excavation of a hands-breadth width in the crumbling roadway, which ran dead straight north and south as far as they could see. 'And those,' pointing to a line of streetlights that now lay on the ground, entwined and enmeshed with weeds.

'World's smallest trench?' guessed Ace, to an amused snort.

'Hardly! No, Ace. This was once a tramway and those streetlights are actually power pylons. At a point in the not so recent past, the rails and cables were all removed and taken away.'

They followed the now empty railbed for trams, heading north. After five minutes they still hadn't come across any rails or intact power cables, which left Ace puzzled and Alex completely clueless. To the Doctor it spoke volumes. So too did what appeared at first sight to be a car-park away to their left.

Sighing, Ace followed the Doctor when he diverted away to the car park. Ranks of vehicles, easily in the thousands, had been left there, all with their bonnets sprung and propped open. None of them had wheels, instead residing on bricks or blocks of wood.

Ace snapped her fingers.

'Professor! I just realised what's missing!'

The Doctor turned from looking at rusted wrecks to his ingenue.

'There's no cars left abandoned. Look at the roads. Not a single car left by the side, or abandoned.'

Beaming with pride, the Doctor inclined his head at Alex.

'Apt pupil. I taught her everything she knows. Well done Ace! I'd missed that. I think that allows me to complete the picture.'

'Recycling!' realised Alex, recognising a concept bedded into the psyche of everyone aboard the arcologies.

'Quite so,' drawled the Timelord, producing a pocket telescope and peering at the buildings of the city centre. As he suspected, window panes were missing from the lower storeys, up to about the tenth floor in every building. There were other gaps above that level where panes had become loose or unseated, unplanned losses thanks to erosion.

Order hadn't broken down in Adelaide. Instead, the city government, probably operating as a devolved entity from the Federal government, had carefully organised a resource-trawl to harvest materials that could be used or re-used. Tram rails, steel cables, wheels and axles from cars, and their electrical systems would have been stripped of copper, batteries removed for their lead. Windows from skyscrapers recovered to reduce the requirement to make new glass, cladding taken away, doors, chairs, tables, all would have been removed.

So, a carefully-planned operation to generate resources. Given the long-term inability of major cities like this one to sustain themselves when the world beyond Australia ceased to communicate, the population must have been evacuated, too. From memory, pre-Big Crash Adelaide had a population of at least a million-and-a-half. The scattered smoke visible must be from stay-behinds who refused to leave the dead city and who remained there, scavenging as best they could.

Coming to a respectful pause, the Doctor stood with hands on hips, nodding to himself in admiration: when faced with the slow demise of their civilisation, these humans hadn't given up, despaired, indulged in anarchy or chaos – no, they had planned and adapted and moved on, creating a devolved population that could survive. Homo Sapiens! Truly indomitable! he thought, echoing an earlier expression aboard Nerva.

The trio walked slowly north, keeping to the middle of the delapidated road. Giant stands of weeds had taken over the gutters, long clogged with earth. Big stagnant ponds loomed, green and lifeless, across the roadway where rains had gathered and stayed. Small animals whispered unseen amongst the long reeds and grasses, making random splashes.

Ace nudged Alex, who looked nervous.

'You look a bit pasty. Anything up?'

He swallowed and gestured at the city centre.

'I've never seen anything as big as those buildings. They must easily be three or four kilometres high! All this flora allowed to grow anywhere, without planning. And something keeps touching my hair!'

Their progress was interrupted by the Doctor, who came to an abrupt halt, putting his umbrella up and holding it horizontally in front of him as a parabolic reflector.

'Expect company, from behind,' he warned them, causing all three to turn and face south along the ragged, overgrown road.

The muted clatter of hoofbeats came to them, a sound muffled by the weeds and shrubs and drifts of earth across the ruined tarmac, until a mounted man came trotting into view astride a big bay mare. Of possible concern was his uniform, blue woollen serge with a white belt and a dark bush hat, almost shouting "Police". A long firearm nestled in a big leather holster on the horse's flank.

When the horse halted, the rider dismounted and jumped down in an easy movement, staying close to the holstered gun, looking at them with sharp, suspicious eyes. He was a big man, with a ruddy complexion and scars across his knuckles.

'Hello!' smiled the Doctor, tipping his hat. Ace tried a sarcastic curtsey. Alex stared, first at the man, then at the horse.

'A horse!' he whispered, too quietly for anyone else to hear. He'd seen film and pictures, of course, and knew about the embryo bank. None of that prepared him for the sweating bulk of the creature, the whickering noises it made, the echoing _clop_ of it's hooves.

'Don't give me "hullo", you scrawny bludger!' scowled the man. His accent sounded just like Ace expected, with the vocabulary to boot. 'What have you been stealing?' he asked, before interrupting the Doctor again. 'Don't lie, I found that cupboard you've got your stash hidden in.'

An uncontrollable snigger found it's way to Ace's lips. She knew what Barry McKenzie here meant.

'I think you've mistaken us for – ah – common criminals,' began the Doctor. 'We've come down from the arcologies in orbit. Arcology One, actually.'

The blue-clad man sneered, totally unimpressed.

'Oh yeah? That's the umpteenth time I've heard that excuse. "We don't know anything about trespassing or stealing or Government Property". Buncha numpties!"

'It's true!' blurted Alex, all injured sincerity.

'Right. Get turned around and head back to the Gardens. If you try running, I'll shoot yer feet off,' and he tapped the solid metal barrel of his gun as he took the saddle again.

He had to dismount again when they reached the straggling brambles outside the Botanic Gardens, tethering the horse and patting it's nose reassuringly. A couple of wrong turns in the denser parts of the jungle cost them a few minutes, until they came abruptly across the Tardis, standing backed against a giant spray of heliotropes.

'Go on, open it up!' snapped the big man. 'Bloody cheek, calling it "Police"! What, did you think we'd not look inside?'

Predictably, the Timelord bristled at any criticism of his timeship, all the more so since he now realised what their captor meant by "cupboard".

Predictably, the big man's jaw dropped and his face paled when the doors were opened. He leant to one side and checked how big the cupboard was on the outside as compared to the inside, then took his hat off and wafted it to cool his suddenly sweaty brow.

'Hello, again. I'm the Doctor, this is Ace and this is Alex. We've come to visit from the arcologies up in orbit.'

This time the Australian responded, slowly, as if drugged.

'Hello. Hello. Ah – I'm Kane. Officer Kane of the South Australian Police.' Which is when they noticed the embossed tin badges sewn to his shoulders: SAP.

They led him back to the clearer grounds of the old main road, where he perched on a rusted remnant that had been a rubbish bin, once. Still looking inebriated, he told them about himself: a guardian of the city's remains, ensuring that people didn't venture into the dangerously unstable, collapsing, friable and undermined city buildings, either out of curiosity or to steal. He hadn't heard the peculiar noise made by the Tardis, instead he'd witnessed swarms of normally indolent birds fleeing their perches before returning. Investigation revealed a large cupboard –

'After that, I don't doubt you're from the Stars.'

None of them had to ask what he meant by that, although he carried on.

'We've all heard about the people who lived in space. Never bloody well imagined I'd meet 'em!'

A glance from Ace confirmed that the others picked up on the past tense.

'You didn't think we were all dead, did you?' asked Alex. Officer Kane shrugged.

'Pretty much. Up until a week ago, anyway, when the courier mail mentioned a spaceship landing north of the coastline, way past New Eucla.'

That meant Dart One.

'How many of you are there still up there?'

'My sphere has about twelve thousand people aboard. With everyone from all the spheres, maybe a hundred and twenty thousand. That's guessing at how many are alive in the Chinese sphere.'

Kane whistled in appreciation.

'That's a tidy township!'

Officer Kane confirmed the Doctor's suspicions, that the city had been deliberately, carefully and slowly emptied of it's populace back when the regional government still existed, a long emigration to west and east along the coastline where small, self-sufficient townships could be established. There they thrived, able to rely on the ocean for fish and seafood, as well as resurgent wildlife. Since the Doctor wanted to travel west, the policeman directed him north, keeping the River Torrens on his left, until they came to Dickson's Crossing, the only bridge that safely crossed the river to the west bank.

'Thank you,' smiled the Doctor. 'We have our own transport.'

'We laugh at rivers!' added Ace. Alex looked faintly glum at not being able to see a real river, until Officer Kane explained about the distance involved to get to the Nullarbor Plain. The young engineer nodded but plainly failed to actually understand how far they had to travel; to him, everywhere was no more than ten minutes walk away and "a thousand kilometres" was no different.

'Do we need to worry about the South Australian Police arresting us?' asked the Doctor, looking ahead as he usually did, and trying to pre-empt trouble. 'You know, strangers, dressed oddly, no papers, arriving mysteriously.'

Kane frowned.

'We don't arrest the Wanderers, and they're completely round the twist – strange, ragged, can't even read. Get arrested? I don't see what for, unless you steal. Or pick a fight. People won't stop asking you questions, you're right about that – you stand out.' He snapped his fingers. 'I can get a notice added to the courier post, warning townships that you're coming. They won't stop asking questions, but they won't try to arrest you, either.'

The "courier post" turned out to be a mail service that used horses, way stations and dedicated riders to make deliveries across South Australia. Not high-tec in the least, it still managed a high level of efficiency and promised to carry any letter from one side of the state to the other in five days or less.

'That's very helpful. Could you include that we intend to stop at Eucla, in case people want to contact us?'

'I wouldn't really have shot yer feet off,' apologised the policeman. 'Just so you lot don't think the worst of us.' He paused before continuing. 'See, there ain't enough humans left, even here in Oz, and _we_ missed the worst of The War. Killing people's a last resort.'

'I guessed that,' murmured the Doctor when the policeman had mounted his horse and departed, to an echoing _clop-clop-clop_. 'Those smoke columns are from squatters - human ones this time. Not too difficult to track down, yet they're still merrily smoking away. I doubt they fear the police.'

Once back in the Tardis, they waited whilst the Doctor perused maps of varying scales on the big wall monitor. His maps were generations out of date, showing the shoreline along the Great Australian Bight as unpopulated, when in reality over a million people lived there. If he'd been thinking ahead properly, he'd have remembered to update from Arc One's database.

Still, going in blind at least allowed one the experience of novelty.


	11. Chapter 12

CHAPTER EIGHT: Country Life

The Doctor chose to land just over the state border, in Western Australia. Not for any political reason; the almost-abandoned town – really only a hamlet – of Eucla sat on that side of the state line, and was the only settlement near the coast. He recalled that maybe fifty people lived there, serving the passing trade of the Eyre Highway.

Correction, he realised, looking at the scanner: he had materialised on a slight rise amidst a collection of sprawling sand dunes, about half a kilometre back from the seashore. Low shrubs and stunted trees graced the gently rolling landscape, where tracks and paths darted in between a small town of strangely-constructed buildings, seemingly more glass than anything else. People were bustling about on their business, carrying long poles that heavy nettings dangled from, glinting silver as sunlight caught the scales of captured fish; a cart pulled by two draught horses went trotting by, carrying a cargo of cut wood, the driver looking astonished over his shoulder at the Tardis's sudden appearance. Other people, including many children busy mending nets, looked up when the strident tones of the otherwordly timeship's arrival came to them.

'Time to make an entrance!' he said, lightheartedly, pausing to clutch Alex's arm. 'Alex, I suspect that there is a sinister influence at work here. Please _don't_ comment on anything the locals say, no matter what the temptation. Take your cue from me.'

The young engineer looked baffled by this request, but nodded and followed both outside. Once again he had to wear the bush hat to prevent feeling overwhelmed by Earth. Which didn't prevent him from seeing all the way to the horizon, making his eyes lose focus and struggle to make sense of the sheer distance.

Children had gone running from their net-mending, racing to seek out anyone in authority, shouting out about "Wanderers arriving!". The Doctor took his time walking down the shifting sands, looking around him to pick up information about "New Eucla" – a sign hung up outside one of the mostly-glass buildings, one that had horse troughs, hay mangers, a tether rail and a weary horse outside. Very well, this township was New Eucla, sprung from the decayed ruins of the old hamlet to accommodate what must be a couple of thousand people. Major occupation: sea-fishing.

They had reached one of the well-trodden paths that wended in amongst buildings before a group of three men, red-faced thanks to arriving at a run, intercepted them. None of them wore any kind of uniform, only home-spun woolen clothes. Their leader seemed to be an apple-cheeked man, missing a front tooth, whose receding hair bristled with dust and sweat. To his left stood a small, wiry, sunburnt elderly man with a salt-and-pepper beard, and to the right a younger man, in dungarees and carrying a spanner in one hand, a hammer in the other. He had the air of being interrupted in his trade by the other two.

'Good afternoon! I'm the Doctor,' announced the Timelord, tipping his hat forward politely. He gestured to right and left. 'Doctor John Smith. The young woman here is Ace, and this is Alex.'

The leader didn't reply straight away, looking over their heads into the middle distance, his attention having been caught by the Tardis.

'Who are you?' he spluttered. 'And how did that get there? And where are you – where the Red Nick are you from?' he added, looking them up and down, recognising that their clothes were not made from wool. 'You can't possibly be Wanderers!'

The Doctor pointed an index finger directly upwards, smiling gently. The townsfolk didn't take long to realise what this meant, their eyes growing wide in amazement. Whilst they tried to process this information, more people began to gather to view the mysterious new arrivals who appeared from nowhere and who looked so strange – both in their dress and by having such pale skin.

'From the Stars?' asked the younger of the trio, pointing his spanner at the heavens, to nods from all three travellers. A chorus of impressed babbling ran around the crowd.

Tooth-Missing looked thunderstruck, unable to speak. The bearded man spoke up, with a tone of wary cunning in his voice.

'Aye, Don, remember the mails mentioned those who landed at Forrest.' He looked intently at all three in turn. 'Decided to come back again, have you?'

Mister Tooth-missing – Don – shook his head.

'You can't just arrive like this.' He surveyed the crowd, now grown to at least thirty people. 'Or hang about disturbing the peace.'

'Do you have an office?' asked Ace, pre-empting the Doctor.

Don nodded, obviously thinking. He pointed at the spanner-wielding young man.

'Terry, go get one of the teachers. We'll need this recording. Alright, you lot, get back to work! Entertainment's over! You three, follow me.' He pointed at the small, shrewd-faced elderly man. 'As Assistant Mayor you can come along as an official, too, Lenny.'

Disappointed, the watching crowd slowly broke up. Don took the lead, his fellow walking alongside them, looking each of them up and down with interest.

'Don, I reckon these togs is made from artificial fibres. We ain't seen any of them in a generation.'

The leader merely grunted, turning down a side-street towards a building partly made of sandstone blocks at ground level, with more timber and glasswork on the upper level.

'Your Town Hall?' guessed the Doctor, to a nod from Don.

Once inside the town hall, they were led to a small office that flanked the main hall, where Don seated himself at a desk. Piles of papers and sets of fountain pens cluttered the desk, calendars and charts were pinned to the walls.

'Lenny, go get a few seats from the hall.' The elderly man returned with a stack of five seats and crammed them into the office, allowing a middle-aged woman to bustle in and take a seat, holding a pen like a dagger.

'This is them!' she exclaimed. Don handed her a sheaf of blank paper.

'Can it, Doris. We need to make notes about this. This is historic. People from the Stars come to visit New Eucla.' He leaned back and raised an eyebrow. 'Now, supposing you three tell me your story?'

'Ace and I are merely passing travellers trying to help those in trouble. Alex is from Arcology One, raised aboard one of the spheres in orbit. We are here because all those in orbit are desperate to return to Earth.'

He turned and gave an encouraging flick of the eyebrows to Alex, who sighed.

'It's true. Everything aboard Arc One is running short, breaking down, wearing out or gone already. That's why we sent down the Dart gliders, to try and establish if we could land our people.'

Don leaned his chair back on two legs and chewed his lip.

' "Dart", eh? You were unlucky, then. Your spaceship got caught in a bush fire at Forrest. Wiped out the whole town as well as them, two hundred souls gone.'

This came as news to all three travellers, of course. Alex didn't understand the concept of a fire that could be allowed to rage unchecked and struggled visibly to assimilate the information.

'We – we wondered if perhaps the people at Forrest might have attacked our glider crew,' he ventured.

Don, Lenny and Doris all looked instantly and equally aghast.

'Young man!' snapped Doris, a fierce light in her eyes. 'I teach crossbow to hunt animals! Animals, not people!'

'What do you people up there think of us!' gasped Don. 'Attack fellow humans!'

Lenny narrowed his eyes disdainfully.

'Bleeding Starmen. What, you think us grubby Ockers kill strangers on a whim!'

Reactions like this were _exactly_ what the Doctor wanted to obtain – genuine human emotive responses to unpredictable triggers, which allowed him to extrapolate a set of data points. The young man had done precisely what he'd intended, by putting a figurative foot in it.

Doris made notes as the Doctor and Alex explained about the Dart glider, making the Euclans look up in surprise when the second glider's fate became known. The explanation about a particle beam weapon didn't get off the ground, until Ace interrupted.

'A ray gun. A great big one.'

Don hummed, Lenny made a face, Doris stopped scribbling.

'Definitely not us!' scowled Lenny. 'Tell 'em, Don.'

'Why d'you think we're still stuck in the eighteen fifties?' asked the leader. 'Because of the Death-Sats. That's why.' He seemed to think all three would know exactly what his brusque explanation meant, then had to enlarge when he merely received three blank looks.

'Death satellites. They shoot ray guns like the one you talked about, except they go for anything electrical. If anyone along the coast ever tried to build a turbine or a generator, or even a telegraph, the death-sats would blow them to bits. Within a couple of hours, sometimes.'

Lenny got a bright idea.

'You lot up there could get rid of them, couldn't you!' he announced brightly, pleased with his deductive skills. 'Yeah, get rid of them.' He warmed to his theme. 'We could use trucks to repair the Eyre, instead of horses and carts. Yeah, if you get rid of them.'

Ace kicked Alex's seat slyly before he could interrupt, causing him to recall the Doctor's words of caution earlier.

'Oh?' enquired the Timelord, politely. 'How do you know that?'

'I worked it out,' declared Don, proudly. 'Only possible explanation. All the places were blown up, roasted, in nothing flat. One workshop that got done in – Morris Vickers' place, out by Barralonga – got destroyed right next to the coaling station, six feet away, and that wasn't touched. And there's a couple hundred miles between the turbine workshop and the telegraph station, with nobody seen near them at all. Yeah. Death satellites. I read all about them in the library.'

Lenny nodded in solemn agreement.

'You bet! I'm old enough to remember the Big Crash. That started when the Yanks blew up a load of Pak missiles on their launch-pads with Death Sats. Yeah.'

Ace, having had a grandstand seat at Armageddon, knew differently. She pondered for a second about how modern myths developed, before catching up with the Doctor as he carried on in his blandly sincere tone.

'Since Alex is completely new to Earth, would you mind providing him with an escort? He's completely unused to your lifestyle and I guarantee he'll have lots of questions. You would? Thank you so much!'

Which, once again, constituted his deviousness in action, requesting an escort when the Euclans would have insisted on allocating one anyway, getting them on-side without realising.

'I would also like to offer one person in your community the chance to go Upstairs and experience life aboard Arcology One, with Ace as a guide for them. They can help to sort out your, ah, Death-Sat problem when they're up there.'

Don perked up at this, and Ace nearly missed the bit with her as a guide –

'What?' she said, before the Doctor carried on.

'They'll need to be young, around twenty years old, and in sound health, no communicable diseases, good hearing - ' during which recitation Don's face fell again. He was then struck by an idea, one that worried him, to judge by the frown that turned his forehead into a corduroy pattern.

'Hang on, hang on. Just how did you get down here? and how are you going to go back to – whatever you called it. The Arkoloidy.' The threat of lightning-baiting electrical equipment hung in the air, and there might have been a longer argument if Terry, the spanner-wielding youngster of the trio, hadn't burst into the office without warning or knocking.

'Jeeez!' swore Lenny, jumping in his seat. Doris glared at the new arrival, who had caused her to scrawl a long inky smear across the paper.

'Don!' blurted the excited younger man.

'In this office, I am **Mayor** Kenneally!' growled Don, dragging open a drawer and pulling out an elaborately worked metal chain, from which dangled an inverted, chiselled and severed Volkswagen logo, which did make an "M" of sorts. He tossed the object onto his desk and scowled at Terry. 'What!'

'That thing up on the dune – it ain't a police box, or a police anything!, babbled the young man, wildly excited. 'It's not even wood, even if it looks like it, right. You can't scratch it, you can't chip it or chop it – you can't even burn it. There's no tracks leading to it, so it came straight down out of the sky, 'cept nobody saw it come down in broad daylight in front of a hundred people working outdoors. _And_ it weighs so much even a draught horse can't shift it.'

Suppressing a shudder at the idea of people trying to burn his Tardis, the Doctor silently thanked Terry and associates for investigating the timeship, and for arriving providentially.

'How old are you, Terry?' asked Lenny, in the habitally sly way he had.

'Uh – twenty last month, Len. Why - you got a prezzie for me?'

Don smiled, showing the gap in his teeth.

'And you're fit as a fiddle, ain't you?'

Terry began to suspect he was being set up. He crossed his arms.

'D – Mayor - I've donated blood twice this year already.' He looked at Lenny. 'I've done my turn in your highway repair-rota, too.'

Don scraped his mayoral seal off the desktop and into a drawer.

'Terry, Terry, you'll hurt my feelings. Right now I'm just being Uncle Don, looking after your best interests.' He spread his hands wide and tried to look sincere. 'I wondered if you'd like to go on a trip with these nice people.'

Now the younger man looked at the Doctor and Ace with increased interest.

'Oh, right. Where along to?'

Both travellers pointed directly upwards. No further explanation was needed: Terry gaped, blinked, muttered under his breath and nodded with enthusiasm.

Plotting on the go meant being creative , mused the Doctor. Like keeping a multitude of plates spinning on poles whilst cycling round them on a unicycle, blindfolded. He led them back to the Tardis, nodding and smiling to passers-by, children running errands, fishermen hauling nets, farriers and carpenters. Alex looked around in muted wonder, seeing, smelling and hearing activities he knew of only at third hand or via a computer monitor. Terry hared on ahead, desperate to get to the bizarre structure standing atop the dunes, allowing the Timelord to pass Ace a small silver cylinder unseen by any Euclans.

'Pocket radio transciever, Brigadier's personal issue. Keep it with you,' he whispered from the corner of his mouth. 'Don't call me, I'll call you. And _don't_ give it away!' He paused again. 'In fact, make sure nobody from Arc One ever gets their hands on it. Bad idea. Germs.'

'Alex!' he called, loudly. 'I'm going to whiz Upstairs with Ace and Terry, drop them off in Arc One and come straight back here. I want you to wait for us.'

By this time they were slogging up the sands of the low ridge to the Tardis. Alex didn't bother at being left behind, cocking his head to catch a low, continuous rumbling roar he hadn't noticed when they arrived, since he'd been so overwhelmed with the perception of a distant horizon. He sprang backwards when the big blue box vanished with a wheezy howl, only for it to reappear less than a second later, making him wonder if the incredible box of tricks had gone wrong.

No. Only the Doctor emerged, looking around and taking lungfuls of sea air, holding Alex's tool box.

'Thank you for remaining reticent in the Mayor's office, Alex,' he murmured. 'Time for a little chat before our watcher catches up with us.' He cast a careful look behind and noticed a man heading directly for their dune.

Pointing with his umbrella, he directed Alex's gaze beyond the scrubland and dunes, to where the sea sparkled and glittered lazily in the sunlight.

'A stroll in that direction, I think, to show you the seashore.'

They set off, sliding down the loose sand in giant footsteps.

'That stuff Don the Mayor spouted about "Death-sats" is all nonsense,' began Alex. 'There simply aren't any.'

He got an encouraging nod.

'I mean, there actually was one, a single American one, and it did destroy a Pakistani nuclear missile fired at the Arcipelago. That was a solo satellite sixrty years ago. Everyone on Arc One knows that much.'

They followed a well-trodden path worn free of sand, passing between the narrow screen of low trees that hid the beach from view, and Alex saw the seashore for the first time.

Before, seeing a landscape that expanded outwards to the horizon had affected his eyes, normally used to a half-kilometre perspective. Now, seeing the endlessly roiling surf and recognising that mysterious low booming sound for what it was - breakers impacting the shoreline, his knees gave way and he sat on the warm sand. This landscape did not dip into unseen hollows, or slope upwards to low peaks. No, this landscape – the sea – ran flat all the way to an infinitely distant horizon, and for the first time Alex began to realise his understanding of distance and perspective had changed. The sea didn't stay static, or simply ripple as the ponds on Arc One did. It moved backwards and forward, with incredible patterns of light dancing and flitting everywhere, it rose and fell, never repeating the same pattern twice. A strange scent tingled his nostrils, and that invisible person tugged at his hair again.

'It's beautiful,' he whispered, eyes moist with unshed tears. 'And scarey at the same time.' He looked at the Doctor and had to clear a lump in his throat before carrying on. 'Thank you for bringing me.'

Eyes with centuries of experience looked down at him.

'I want you to remember this feeling, Alex. If I were a bit colder, I'd explain about "paradigm shifts". Instead I want you to remember how you felt at this point when the townspeople of New Eucla come face-to-face with an equally unsettling experience.'

The words went in, but Alex didn't really understand what was meant at that moment. Levering himself up on one elbow, he turned sharply to try and find what invisible fingers were stirring his locks.

'That's "wind",' explained his companion, grinning, all the solemnity of his previous announcement gone. 'Along with "weather", it's something new to get accustomed to.'

The sombre expression returned.

'You're quite right about the so-called "death-sats". Sheer nonsense. My first suspicion is that our mystery aliens are trying to restrict any technological advancement along this coastal area. My second – actually I think I'll leave that unspoken as yet.'

Six large fishing boats had earlier been run up the beach on wheeled wooden cradles that were now propped with rocks, and their crews were unloading nets, reels, ropes and bouys, having already sent their fish cargoes inland to the gutting and smoking sheds. Alex watched their easy, practiced operation, interspersed with laughs and casual curses.

'Could I travel on one of those?' he asked wistfully.

'Unwise at present!' cautioned the Doctor. 'Let's get you used to a distant horizon and a flat landscape first. Whilst you may have read about ships, you certainly haven't sailed on one, and being sea-sick is very unpleasant.'

Finished with their off-loading, dozens of fishermen began to amble up the beach, looking at both travellers with undisguised curiosity.

'A final word of warning, Alex. Don't disagree with any claims about mystery laser satellites, or mention aliens. Most _especially_ don't mention aliens.'

When the fishermen came level with Alex and the Doctor, another person came shuffling up behind them. When they turned, a tall, wiry individual wearing battered clothing, shoes made from car tyres and a slouch hat discoloured with dirt and sweat had arrived.

'Afternoon. Name's Mike, Mike Velic, Deputy Mayor. Don – er, Mayor Kenneally, that is, asked me to catch up with you. You come visting from the Stars?' he explained, looking them over with shrewd eyes.

'Alex has. I'm more of a passer-by.'

'You bet! This is incredible – seeing Earth up close. The smells, the horizon, the sounds – I've never heard the sea before, or been close to a live horse, and I want to go on one of those ships -'

Mike pushed his dirty hat back and scratched his tanned forehead.

'The horizon and the sea? Just part of the landscape, mate.'

Alex shook his head in fervent denial.

'Not to me! My landscape has been the inner surface of a sphere with a completely controlled environment. No rain, no clouds, no wind, no weather.'

Mike grinned.

'Sounds ace, mate! Just wait till we get a thunderstorm, then you'll change your mind.'

He led them back up the beach, in the footsteps of the departing fishermen.

'Where do you wanna go first? Don said show you around. Lenny volunteered but he's in charge of the highway team and had to ride out to 'em.'

Alex shrugged.

'Begin with the nearest building and look at every single one after that?'

His eager inquisitiveness was boundless and his questions incessant, and it took a good hour before Mike noticed that Doctor Smith had quietly vanished at some point of their township tour. He shrugged; Don had only sent him to make sure these strangers didn't get up to mischief and he couldn't be in two places at once.

In fact, whilst Mike had been escorting them to the courier offices, the tannery, shearing sheds, the smoking sheds, and explaining the function of each, the Doctor had been keeping a cautious, watchful eye on the watcher. Eventually he decided that body language, inflection and speech implied only what Mike had told them: he was there to keep an eye on them, and not under orders to inflict any harm.

Very well, time to explore on his own. He boldly strolled off, being watched by curious townsfolk who whispered to each other when he passed, and accompanied by a small cluster of children. In time, a pair of teenaged girls caught up with the youngsters.

'There you are! What d'you think you're doing!' shouted one of the pair.

'We was just watching the stranger,' replied a child, meekly.

'You don't just walk out of the nursery!' said the second girl, exasperated. 'That's twice this month.' She turned to the Doctor, who anticipated a telling-off for his involuntary Hamelin ability. 'Thanks, Mister Smith. At least they all stayed in one place 'cos of you this time!'

'Happy to help,' he said, bowing.

'Ooh, int he polite!' giggled the second girl. 'Come on you lot.'

His exporatory stroll seemed to be entirely uneventful, rather to his disappointment, so he followed a track off what passed for the main street in New Eucla, passing one of the big glass buildings Mike had said were used to corral sheep before shearing. The doors were swung wide open, allowing air to circulate in what must be a sweltering box when full of sheep.

Even though he expected trouble the savage impact on his spine came as a surprise, causing him to stumble inside the glass shed and fall onto the soft dark earth that smelt of sheep droppings, his umbrella falling alongside him. A rustling thump, followed by a grating sound and a solid _clack_, were revealed to be a small sack thrown into the shed just inside the doors, which had been slammed shut. That last noise had been a solid beam being dropped into place across the doors, holding them shut.

'Ow,' winced the Timelord, rubbing his bruised vertebrae. The bruise would, without a doubt, match the end of that wooden beam.

Very well, the suspect had stuck him inside a glass shed. Clearly there was more to this plan –

'Ah,' he murmured. 'I see.'

From the sack crawled an enormous spider, it's body easily bigger than his hand. It scuttled out into the shed, followed by another dozen that rapidly scouted around before focussing on him. Forming a wavy line across the building's width, they cut him off from the door as he slowly backed away.

'Hmm. Interesting. Pack hunting instincts. Most unusual.' He didn't recognise the species, which might be a result of local mutations, evolution being driven faster than normal thanks to the presence of radioactive isotopes in the food chain. Recognisable or not, they still had the air of being hunters, hunters and killers, carnivores. Hungry carnivores.

The line of spiders advanced, herding him back into a corner. Discretion being the better part of valour, the Doctor tried calling for help – and realised the shed's glass didn't transmit sound very well, if at all.

One spider, slightly in advance of the others, ducked down and he recognised it was about to jump.


	12. Chapter 13

INTERPOSIT FOUR:

One reason the two American spheres had managed rapid construction, an equally rapid enpopulation and lengthy survival had been adherence to a fairly strict military organisation, which still remained formal and rigid after two generations. A Shadow Cabinet still existed, and the hereditary Vice President still carried the authority of the old, pre-Crash United States. Their Texan "Carlsbad Crew", as the stiff humour aboard Washington dubbed it, had thawed under the influence of weather, fresh air, natural water and no worrying about whether their living space would stop rotating or not. Thanks to the prototype laser defence grid, a great deal more of the United State's infrastructure survived intact than anyone had expected. The problems now were maintenance, as The Phage had so severely thinned surviving populations.

Since landing from Washington five years previously the fifty men and women of Operation Phoenix had managed great things. Two completely re-assembled shuttles now resided in storage, preserved in an atmosphere of argon. A kilometre-long runway had been constructed, painstaking metre by metre, north of the mine complex and along the bed of a road from before the Crash. Recycled derricks and rigs had given themselves up to form a functional launch tower; the structure would have horrified NASA staffs from as far back as the Fifties, but it held up in a tropical storm without buckling or breaking, which satisfied Operation Phoenix. If they managed to create a sufficiently powerful rocket fuel, they could even re-use their venerable landing shuttle.

Yet over the last two years there had been a series of disasters and accidents. Not from the locals. No. They were friendly enough, willing to trade for food, or do menial work under supervision, or help with communicating to other colonies along the Gulf of Mexico. Nor were they allowed on-site; a long perimeter fence with ground sensors backed up by armed patrols, infra-red beams and occasional dogs kept any unauthorised visitors away. The official representatives of Uncle Sam Downstairs weren't going to chance anyone damaging their precious shuttles.

The real problem seemed to be fate. Twice their stores of refined fuel had gone up in flames. First, thanks to lightning from a tropical storm. Second, a leak that contaminated the groundwater and also ignited.

Now the duty team and patrolling dog handlers stared with dismay at the crumpled, punctured fuel refining plant, collapsing into itself in giant gouts of flame and fire, a salamander's delight.

Eighteen hours later the mangled metal detritus had cooled enough to be inspected. The Chief Engineer and his two deputies scrambled around, under and over struts and piping that still radiated heat, smoking or steaming in the early evening air. The three fire-suited figures congregated and pointed at a crazily-tilted pressure tank, getting closer and looking at support stanchions.

Colonel Hamilton Boyce, the humourless and by-the-book commander of Operation Phoenix, stood and watched the trio examining wreckage. A tic in one cheek was the only visible sign of the rage he felt; small as the gesture might be, it warned crew not to approach him on anything less than vital matters.

Now, doffing his oversized silver headgear, Chief Engineer Murakow came back over the cooling wrack to the Colonel. Murakow's face was grimy, his eyes red and bleary. He'd taken great risks in the small hours to try and extinguish the fires. Unsuccessfully.

'Mike?' asked Boyce. The other man sighed, straightened his back painfully and wiped sweaty ash from his face.

'Looks like the welds holding up an intermediary process tank cracked. The whole thing pancaked, split, sparked. You know the rest.'

Boyce ground his teeth. Murakow looked puzzled and angry.

'We knew those welds were crucial. I inspect – inspected – them daily. No signs of any shearing or tears.'

'How long to reconstruct?'

Murakow's face lightened a bit.

'Only a couple of months. The original engineering was a by-guess and by-golly job. We know the short cuts this time.' He gestured at the fuel storage tanks, now ringed with cameras and sensitive sensor equipment taken from towns all along the Gulf. 'The stored stuff is fine for another five months.'

Showing rare emotion, the colonel turned to look over the Gulf of Mexico.

'Dammit Mike, when are we gonna get a break? Half the country nuked, half the population dead of disease. Our official government stuck in orbit. Every shuttle site on the planet gone. If I didn't know better - '

He bit off the comment from an unfathomable, almost unconscious dread.


	13. Chapter 14

CHAPTER NINE: Out of the Blue

Terry's reaction when he stepped out of the TARDIS was exactly the same as Ace's had been, which is why she passed him a spare straw boater of the Doctor's that had been picked up for this very purpose. He squinted and winced, having had a rapid ultraviolet bath to prevent any terrestrial infections being carried aboard the sphere.

'Wow!' he gasped, looking upwards, then at the transparent strip, back down to the inner surface, at the north and south polar regions. 'This is like a dream!'

Ace looked at him coolly.

'Don't speak too soon. Everyone up here would gladly trade places with the people in New Eucla.'

She led the awestruck young man across the tired plastic paths, heading for Lichfield. Progress was slow, since Terry stared inquisitively at everything, until she linked arms and practically towed him to the building cluster.

Davros wasn't in, so she tried the central Common Room, which seemed to be a big meeting hall, lots of tables, chairs, screens and microphones. A knot of people huddled around one table, working on digital screens and unaware of who the new arrivals were.

'Er – hello,' tried Ace, making all six look up in surprise.

'You're the girl from Earth,' stated one. 'You've come back?'

His expression of open surprise suggested that he hadn't expected either of the travellers to return.

'Who's this? Another visitor?'

'Can we help?'

'Is Doctor Smith back, too?'

Shaking her head, she introduced Terry.

'Unlike me or the Prof – er, Doctor Smith – Terry has grown up in Australia. The town of New Eucla.'

Twelve eyes abruptly switched to stare at the young engineer, who flushed in embarassment at being under such scrutiny. One of the six gave a long, low whistle.

'Okay, I vote we drop the business in hand and instead interview this man from Downstairs,' stated a pale young man wearing the epaulettes of a Warden.

'Done!' chorused the rest.

'Take a seat, please,' invited the Warden. Another member, a curly-haired woman with an air of being in command, used her Tab to order refreshments, and another slid over a table and chairs.

'Er – are you sure you want to interview _me_?' asked Terry, seating himself slowly and looking puzzled. 'I'm not very important.' Ace nudged him and tutted.

'Oh yes,' said the woman who had Tabbed. 'We've not had any contact with Downstairs since our shuttle got destroyed, and none for fify years before that.'

'The only people in radio contact now are the Americans in Texas,' added the Warden, whom Ace now recognised as the one called Barclay from her previous encounter when here with the Doctor.

'What! Radio?' exclaimed Terry. 'What – what about the death-sats?'

'The Ozzies are convinced laser satellites are sitting in orbit shooting anyone who tries to use electrical devices,' explained Ace, to the astonishment of their audience.

'Ah – why is that?' asked another man, hitherto silent. His quick, intelligent eyes darted between Ace and Terry.

'It's what they do. Mayor Kenneally explained it, how if you try to build anything electrical, the death-sats destroy it. It's true, I've seen the Vicker's workshops at Barralonga.'

The man took a pair of glasses from an inner pocket of his worksuit and put them on, slowly, clearly thinking over his reply.

'Okay, Terry. I don't doubt that a force of some kind destroyed electrical systems Downstairs. I am equally certain that it wasn't a laser satellite in orbit.'

'Why?'

'Because there are no satellites left in orbit any longer. None.'

This bald statement of fact only threw the engineer off for a second.

'You're still up here.'

'We are, Terry – oh, sorry, I've not introduced myself. Christos Abramovitch. The reason we remain is because we can use dynamic manouvering systems to retain our position above Earth. Low-orbit satellites like laser platforms suffer orbital decay within a few years and burn up. Others suffer meteorite impact, solar flares, power failure, that sort of thing. They don't last forever, Terry, and the last satellites went silent a generation ago.'

Ace realised the half-dozen people in front of them were descendants of the sphere's Founders.

'Do you think the Doctor's hypothesis about alien squatters holds a bit more water now?' she asked.

Christos chewed a thumbnail and looked uncomfortable.

'It begins to look more plausible. Emilia?'

'I don't understand why aliens, or anyone, for that matter, would blow up anything electrical. Allergic to it?' said the woman with authority.

Terry waved his hands to interrupt.

'Hey, hey, hey! What's this stuff about aliens?'

Emilia sighed and gestured to Ace.

'The Doctor's convinced aliens are behind the Great Northern War, and the Phage, and destroying Arcology One's gliders.'

'He never mentioned anything about aliens!' snapped Terry, looking angry.

'Because they've been operating in secrecy which they need to keep, and anybody mentioning it will be killed. Anyone they speak to will be killed.' She made an intuitive leap, one the Doctor would have been proud of. 'That village, Forrest, was destroyed by them, not by a bush fire. They didn't expect a glider to come down, so they weren't prepared and by the time they were prepared, your villagers would have been in close contact with the Arc crew for hours. Learning too much. So they were killed.'

Terry's anger faded into an appalled look.

'There were over two hundred souls in Forrest! What kind of monster kills two hundred people!'

Christos looked over the rim of his glasses.

'Inhuman ones, in the literal sense. I must say, the Doctor's hypothesis is becoming more likely by the hour. You say several sites have been destroyed?'

Terry nodded. Six that were known of. There might be isolated sites deep in the outback whose destruction nobody knew about.

Barclay spoke up.

'So these aliens, whom I admit now seem more plausible, will kill to keep their secrets? And we allowed Alex McMillan to go down with your friend? That's putting him at risk.'

Ace stood up for her companion.

'The Doctor'll look after him! He'll put himself in harm's way before he risks anyone else.'

Christos heard the fiery riposte from the intense young woman, filing it away in his memory. He felt a greater sense of unease than at any time since Doctor John Smith had stood up to lecture on alien infiltrators living in Australia and manipulating humanity into almost destroying itself. The idea had been ridiculous – to begin with. After assessing the evidence, including this latest information from a real inhabitant of Australia, the concept of evil aliens plotting in the outback became almost matter-of-fact.

So: destroying any attempt by the Australians to create technology derived from or with electrical devices. That smacked of trying to keep them firmly in the mid-nineteenth century – which would make sense if these hypothetical aliens feared being threatened by technology. The idea of "Death Sats" didn't get past the first sceptical analysis, because the American's Carlsbad team communicated regularly with Washington and California. They'd suffered a lot of problems, but none that included being blown up from orbit. In fact, within a week Arc One would be in position to carry out laser-signalling with Washington. Carried out via Morse Code, it was a slow but effective method.

If Doctor Smith was correct, he and Alex were in danger. Attempting to reveal the truth meant alerting the aliens – except how would they know of events in a human township? Presumably the aliens were horrible, green-skinned, multiple-eyed and not able to blend in with their victims.

He sighed. This isolation in orbit was a trial and a torment. They couldn't advise or help either of the pair Downstairs. And the Doctor had bragged about how intelligent he was!

'Young lady – Ace,' he asked, slowly, a sense of suspicious curiosity springing to his mind and tongue. 'I find it strange that your friend has gone back to Earth and left you completely isolated up here.'

'He can always pop back in the Tardis,' half-lied Ace. Mentally she crossed her fingers.

Barclay frowned in puzzlement, looked at Christos, then back at Ace. Not slow on the uptake, he understood Abramovitch's hinting to imply the girl had smuggled a radio transmitter aboard Arc One.

He unslung a long wand-like instrument from his jacket, poked a button and pointed it at Ace, who flinched, expecting a paralysing ray or a sonic attack. Instead a high-pitched modulated whine came from the wand, making Barclay nod in a fashion she imagined he felt projected "steely resolve".

'Active EMF detector,' carelessly explained Abramovitch. 'Multi-purpose. Very useful. Now - '

'Show us what you brought aboard!' snapped Barclay. Ace decided he didn't get enough chances to show off how he was Warden Supreme and wanted to test his role.

Wordlessly, from beneath her jacket she produced a small metal cylinder, studded with buttons, a dial and a telescoping aerial.

'A radio. I see. So he can remain in touch. I think you need to render that device over to us and allow us to contact him,' commented Abramovitch, mildly.

'He told me not to give it up!' replied Ace, a touch of her trademark asperity colouring her cheeks.

'I can have ten Wardens here in twenty seconds to wrestle it off you,' interrupted Barclay, to an annoyed roll of the eyes from the other five.

'He told me it's an infection risk!' snapped Ace, only to be drowned out by Barclay snapping into his Tab, calling for reinforcements. For a moment the young woman set her jaw, about to refuse the request, until a pair of Wardens appeared at the common room's entrance and made directly for her. Then she shrugged and tossed the transciever to Abramovitch, the nearest sitter.

'Try if you like. He warned me not to call him and said he'd be the one doing the calling.'

Christos looked the radio over. Simply designed, nothing too advanced. He tried the green button and got static. Tuning the dial didn't help at all, all he got was static.

'He'll have his radio turned off,' warned Terry. 'Or the death-sats would blow him up.'

Unbidden, Christos rolled his eyes.

'Hopeless,' he muttered.

'Nothing's hopeless,' retorted Ace.

Barclay looked between the two of them.

'Maybe not. I don't know whether to be impressed that you came back, implying that your companion believes Arc One to be safe, which gives us hope. Or whether he believes Downstairs to be so dangerous that he can't have you hanging around. That would be hopeless.'

Terry, spurred on by injured pride that anyone dared criticise his homeland, spoke up in it's defence.

'New Eucla's not dangerous! People don't get skin cancer any more and there never was much fallout. The worst things that happen are winter storms, you get lightning and ships at sea have foundered. All you have to do to avoid danger is stay away from the outback if you travel alone.'

This statement stirred the interest of the listening Deputies, who needed to consider the possibility, no matter how slim it seemed at that moment, of sending Arcology One's population Downstairs.

'An interesting hint, Terry. Can you enlarge on it? Don't forget none of us have ever set foot in Australia. Nor upon Earth, for that matter,' asked Christos.

Terry felt equally adrift. The only familiar thing in this giant space station was the bamboo chair underneath him.

'Um. Let me think. First, you need to keep clear of the dingoes. Dingoes – wild dogs,' he added, seeing uncertainty on his audience's faces.

'Not feral ones. They've been around for thousands of years,' added Ace helpfully.

'Thank you,' said Emilia, drily, and Ace remembered that the woman was a vet. 'Will they attack humans?'

Terry shook his head.

'Not normally. They live in the outback and keep clear of towns and villages, but if you trespass on their territory alone, you're in trouble. They're smarter than any dingoes used to be in the past, too, which some say is natural selection or mutation. What else is there? Oh – "Dilly". What we call the Giant Marine Crocodile. About thirty yards long and weighs four or five tons. Lives in the deep oceans but sometimes comes ashore and we find their footprints. Fishermen have seen 'em at sea once or twice, and there's some big bones been found on the forshore. Ah! How could I forget! The Hunting Spider. They are very dangerous.'

Without exception all six Deputies (and Ace) shivered in repulsion. With no live insects aboard the sphere, there weren't any spiders either and nobody amongst the crew had ever seen a live arachnid.

Terry warmed to his theme.

'They're huge things, big as a dinner-plate. They can jump, about eight or nine feet and they have poison fangs. What's scarey is that they hunt their prey in packs, thirty or forty at a time. They send out scouts to look for food and if they catch an animal alone, they form a circle around it. Then they take turns jumping and biting it, until it drops dead and they suck it dry. Running away doesn't work, either, they keep the circle intact and follow along.'


	14. Chapter 15

CHAPTER TEN: The Main Thing

That first spider, bolder or greedier than others flanking it, flicked itself from the hard-packed earth of the cattle shed, flying with horrifying speed directly at the Doctor's torso at chest-height.

- where it hit the slightly yielding surface of a rapidly erected umbrella, bouncing off and landing yards away, upside down, undignified and scrabbling to regain it's correct posture.

Fifteen-love, chortled the Doctor to himself, before rapidly sobering at the sight of a dozen other huge spiders still waiting to kill him. They remained safely distant; he wondered for a second why they didn't merely swarm attack and swamp him en masse, and if the sonic screwdriver might repel them. At the first sign of movement, another spider came leaping at him.

This time the monster arachnid hit the umbrella's tip and impaled itself fimly. A disgusted Doctor had to kick it free. The twitching body fell amongst the other spiders, which enthusiastically fell upon it, draining it dry in seconds before turning back to him.

'Hey!' came a shout from the suddenly opened shed doors, attracting the attention of both Timelord and spiders. A slew of glowing coals came sailing in from the doorway, hurled from a bucket and scattering across the interior of the shed, forcing the hunting pack to scatter as well. Needing no invitation and with his umbrella as a shield, the Doctor danced nimbly across the glowing debris (plus one spider that came too close) and darted out of the doorway before a young Aboriginal man slammed the glass doors closed, putting the retaining baulk back in place. A pair of nursery children clung to the young man's trousers, looking upset.

'Phew! A narrow escape!'

'You're not kidding, man,' said the Aborigine. 'These little rascals bunked off from nursery to follow you. Next I know they come yelling and screaming into the forge that you're shut in a shed with a pack of Hunting Spiders.'

Two solemn faces nodded in agreement.

The Doctor bowed to them.

'Thank you very much.' He dug around in a jacket pocket and found a Hershey's bar, which the pair accepted with a sombre air.

'What the hell happened?' asked the young black man. 'Those things keep clear of town. We might see one or two in winter, at worst. Not twenty all at once!' He squinted at the doors. 'And those doors were shut from the outside.'

'Yeeeees,' drawled the Doctor, buffing his trousers and shoes, wriggling his eyebrows playfully at the two nursery children. 'I had noticed. Now, you two, please run along back to the nursery, you've had quite enough excitement for one day.'

He stood up and held out a hand as the children ran off.

'I'm the Doctor. You may have heard about my arrival already, Mister - ?'

The young black man slapped himself on the forehead. Of course! How could he not have realised! With that peculiar suit, and his pallid skin, this stranger – who was indeed strange – must have come from the Stars!

'Billy Barakan. Here to learn how to run a forge and foundry.' And he shook the proffered hand.

'Ah, the metal-working trades. Billy, could I trouble you to keep this incident quiet?'

'What!' came the startled response. 'Man, you gotta be kidding! That was attempted murder - '

'Yes, I know, and since it didn't succeed I think the culprit will try again. I'd much rather he took a crack at me than at Alex.'

A solid thump came from the cattle shed as a spider hurled itself at the glass beside them, making it rattle. Billy gestured them further away before starting to walk.

'Don't worry, they're cannibals. They'll eat each other. Any left will fry in the sun.' He stared at the little man in the odd suit. 'Why do you want people to try and murder you?'

Excellent! mused the Timelord. Billy had almost accepted that this assassination attempt needed to be kept a secret. Almost.

'Oh, I don't. Not really. But it acts as an excellent confirmation that my suspicions are correct, because if I worry someone enough to merit murder, I'm on the right track. I only need to stay alive for a couple more days, besides.'

Billy thought this was madness. There had never been a murder in New Eucla or the hamlets around it; proscriptions about taking human life ran deep amongst the Earth's dwindled populations.

'One possible complication – you don't have guns here, do you?'

Another puzzling question, from Billy's perspective. There had been lots of guns once upon a time, post-Big Crash. Once the ammunition dried up, the guns lost any utility they might have had. Now, the State Arsenal at Canberra forged shotguns in strictly limited numbers, together with shells for them, rifles being more difficult to make and with less practical, non-homicidal uses.

'Guns? No. The South Oz or Westie cops carry them, nobody else.' A sudden inspiration struck. 'There are crossbows. Did you want to buy one?'

The Doctor looked appalled. A crossbow! Richard de Coverley would have spat at the very thought, all those yew longbow lessons learning to split the wand –

'Goodness, no! No, thank you. I shall rely on my wit and speed to stay out of trouble.'

By this time they'd reached the big brick building that housed the joint forge and foundry, the chimney pouring out a fog of smoke and soot. Echoing clangs and rattles came from within, backed by the muted roar of a furnace. One end of the building lay open to the elements, allowing a view of the hot, smokey interior where men, stripped to the waist, toiled amidst glowing metals and coals. Steam sprang like a living thing from water troughs where hot metals were being quenched, and a clattering, squealing steam engine hammered away at the back of the building.

Only half-joking, the Doctor put a finger in each ear.

'Can't hear a thing. I need a quick chat with you, young Billy. Kindly walk with me a minute.'

Mike had begun his guided tour with the agricultural and horticultural trades practiced in the town, before moving outwards to the semi-industrial buildings. Most of these were built with brick, stone and wood, rather than the ubiquitous glass; for reasons of safety, where fire or steam or high-speed machinery were involved. Alex judged the level of technology to be about mid-Victorian, the baseline that Mizz Branson had feared the world would devolve to in the Big Crash's aftermath, yet he was reminded forcefully that his Downstairs descendants retained every iota of human ambition and creativity that his companions Upstairs possessed.

They'd been walking past Lenny's domain, material for highway repair and maintenance, huge heaps of coal, quarried stone, chunks of limestone, sand and brickstacks, when he'd made a passing comment about being two hundred years behind the times. Mike had stopped and glared at him.

'Watch it, you. We haven't forgotten what we came from, y'know.'

With enough grace to blush, Alex mumbled an apology. Mike punched him on the bicep, hard enough to hurt, making the young engineer wide-eyed with worry that he was about to be attacked, only for Mike to roll his eyes and apologise in turn.

'Sorry. It's hard to remember you don't know our ways. We ain't savages, you know. We've got a cricket league, and soccer divisions, and rugby too, all along the coast. Civic pride and all that, keeping up the human heritage.' He sighed. 'It's harder being reminded what we came from and how hobbled we are now.'

'The death-sats?' guessed Alex. Mike nodded and indicated the scrub-dotted hills beyond New Eucla.

'Mail by horse. Steam engines. Stalking prey with a crossbow. When we should have telephones, and cars and hunting rifles. We know what we could have, except we can't have it. Bloody frustrating!'

Alex had to bite his tongue to prevent blurting out observations about alien intruders.

'Oh? I would have thought old folks like Lenny would be most upset about what they can't have. After all, he's old enough to remember things before the Big Crash.'

Mike grinned a mocking grin.

'He's a moany old sod, isn't he! Yeah, you're right. But, the government created a set of books after the Big Crash for anyone coming along afterwards, sort of a picture library of what we'd achieved. It goes up and down the coast from one end to the other with the couriers. Getting pretty worn, now, but they keep people abreast of what we had. So we don't forget what we had.'

Alex turned a wondering eye on Mike. Had the Doctor, who seemed to have at least three different agendas on the go at any one time, manouevred them into close proximity in order that they had exactly this conversation?

'Mike, Upstairs on Arc One we're at the cutting edge of human technology. Nuclear power, electronic communications, computer-controlled atmosphere, medicine, pharmacology, hydroponics, blah blah blah. Everyone up there – Every. Single. One. – would swap Arc One for New Eucla in a heartbeat. Everything Upstairs is running out or breaking down. A single meteor could destroy the whole sphere in ninety seconds flat. A serious fault in the fusion motor would kill fifty per cent of us within five minutes. We live – sorry, _they_ live – in an environment that barely sustains itself from day to day. No matter how backward life might be here, it's still life. '

Both men stood outside the unglamourous exterior of a sheep-dip and looked at each other with sudden understanding, that the greener grass on the other side of that electrified barbed-wire fence laden with directional anti-personnel mines, that greener lawn was only greener thanks to the mould that infested it.

'What do you say we find your mate Doctor Smith? He sneaked off an hour ago. I don't suppose he could've got up to mischief in that time, but Don'll want a report on what he did.'

Alex didn't know the Doctor like Ace and thus didn't snort scornfully when the words about mischief were mentioned. They found him in the company of a young male Aborigine, sitting under the awning of New Eucla's only retail food outlet, a combination café-cum-shop-cum-hotel, listening intently.

''Lo, Bill,' waved Mike. 'Skiving, eh?'

'Stuff you!' replied the young man, hotly. 'I'm filling in the Doctor. He's important!'

'My fault entirely,' beamed the small man. 'Billy's been a fount of information. Very helpful indeed.'

'If you've finished being entertained by him, then he can get back to the forge. His dad ain't paying for him to sit and jaw.'

Billy stood to go, pointing over the limits of New Eucla to the outback.

'Twenty miles that way, Doctor. Be seein' you.'

He walked away with a parting rude gesture to Mike, who returned it.

'Cheeky young larrakin,' he muttered. 'You'd think an Assistant Deputy Mayor'd get more respect.' Curiosity got the better of him. 'What was Billy pointing out? There's nothing but outback that way.'

'Forrest,' stated the Doctor. 'I'd like to visit, and for that I'll need a horse.'

Mike couldn't see any reason to travel twenty miles across a barren landscape to poke around a charcoal boneyard when he, Don and a dozen others had already been there. Yes, he added. The flames had been visible from New Eucla. He and the fire brigade had ridden across the bare lands to find Forrest already beyond help, most of the buildings already collapsed into cinders and ash, not a single soul surviving, and a strange, red-hot metallic craft burnt out at the edge of the brushfires. The rescue party became a funeral one, digging a communal grave for the sad remnants of Forrest's inhabitants. Mike wondered briefly why the little man's eyes glinted with a touch of frost at the mention of the bodies. Frost and a hint of fire, too, and Mike decided as the flesh on his back crawled and tingled that the strange little man wasn't someone you wanted to cross.

'A worthy job, Mike. Not a pleasant one. Still, I would like to see the arcology's Dart and what happened to it.'

Deferring to a man who knew all about spaceships when he personally knew nothing at all, Mike shrugged in acceptance.

'Take this,' he said, offering what the Doctor recognised as a hacksawed Volkswagen bezel, where the large "W" had been removed and a chain hung from the "V"'s apex. Not quite an "A" for "Assistant Mayor", but close enough. 'Go to the courier station and ask for a reserve horse. Please, don't injure or exhaust it, or I'll be up for the chop.'

'Thank you!' exclaimed the Doctor, smiling mightily and walking backwards whilst bowing, making a timely exit before the Assistant Mayor changed his mind.

'Right, Alex. You've seen everything to see here. Let's get back to Don and you can tell us all about your Ark.'

The deeply-tanned courier station staff, a clutch of hard-bitten horsemen, were suspicious at first when the Doctor ventured into their humble homestead. His display of the Assistant Mayor's token quelled any doubts and they loaned him a good-natured roan mare, being warned not to ride her to exhaustion or get stalked by Hunting Spiders.

'Thanks for the warning,' replied the Doctor, drily. He hadn't ridden for several decades, but once learnt, never forgotten, and he swung up onto the worn leather saddle like a practiced rider. The mare didn't need any spurring, ambling off into New Eucla and out onto a track to the north that led past a cricket ground, a football pitch and the town's cemetery. A few dusty children were playing football with ferocious concentration and missed him passing-by completely.

Most of the graves were marked with either simple wooden crosses, or low headstones, running in neat ranks by the hundred. A smaller enclosure in the far corner caught his eye: it's internal fence separated it from the bigger cemetery proper, and had only a few markers. One in particular struck him as unusual: in addition to a normal inscription it had a small, colourful metal plate attached to the crossbar. The incongruous design might not have caught the eye of anyone else; to the Doctor, it spoke libraries.

'One moment,' he told the mare, dismounting and tethering her to the boundary fence.

The reason for a separate enclosure became clear when he read aloud inscriptions on the crosses.

' "Known only to god: drowned in the Great Storm of 2120".'

' "A sailor from other shores: drowned at sea 2105".'

' "A sailor from other shores:drowned at sea 2112".'

' "Known only to god; buried with his badge of rank: drowned in the Great Storm of 2120".' – this, the grave with the colourful metal badge affixed to it's cross.

Frowning, the Doctor read and re-read the badge. Another piece in the jigsaw fell into place.


	15. Chapter 16

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Bogus Man

A slow trot across the Nullarbor Plain brought the Doctor to Forrest in a couple of hours. He could smell the destroyed village before seeing it, a smokey stink brought on the wind when it shifted to the south-west, heavy with aromatics from wood and tar.

From a slight rise south of the nearest buildings, he could see the whole array of ruins, perhaps forty of them that ran in a semi-circle of a few hundred metres, with what might have been a school or chapel in the centre. Everything blackened, collapsed, destroyed. Sad and lonely carcasses of carts or wagons lay on the tracks that served as roads, and the roasted stumps of a few pathetic trees could be picked out. Nearby, close to the scorched bushes that ringed the dead town, a grimy metal delta looked abandoned, sitting in ruts that ran back across the landscape for half a kilometre: Dart One. The destroyed shuttle, sitting on the aged remains of a decayed landing-strip.

With a sigh, and not really knowing what he was looking for, the Doctor headed down into town. His mount displayed signs of distress when they got near the first burned-out house, so he stopped and tethered her to a nearby bush before walking over to Dart One.

The shuttlecraft windows were gone, melted and puddled on the craft's exterior, and spatters of solidified metal sat under the hull, where the alloys had run when molten. The interior was blackened and rancid; the Doctor didn't bother to give it more than a passing glance. When he walked around the hull, the ground crunched underfoot. Stooping to examine, he discovered a ring of earth burned almost to glass about the Dart.

'Interesting,' he mused, rubbing his chin.

Walking back across the sole main street, he noticed another anomaly: looking back towards the crest he'd originally been looking from, the rear of the burned buildings were significantly less damaged than their fronts. A tangle of carbon sticks proved, on closer inspection, to be the friable, broken remains of a horse, still in harness.

Forming a clearer idea of what happened, he walked to the burned brush that surrounded the graveyard town, standing on tiptoe to look eastwards, then wet a finger and held it up to test wind strength and direction. He carefully walked along the perimeter of sooty stumps, checking growth patterns until the sun began to settle.

Finally, feeling that he'd spent enough time wool-gathering, he returned to the patient mare, finding a sugar cube deep in a jacket pocket and allowing her to mumble it out of his palm. A faint sound, sounding suspciously like hoofbeats, came to him on the wind.

'Time to be gone, I think,' he whispered to the horse, mounting and trotting off quickly and quietly to the east, well away from the route he'd followed to Forrest.

This new route guaranteed that anyone trying to follow him would have difficulty – the hard-baked ground left no hoofprints and shadows were lengthening and growing as dusk fell – but also meant it took him until late that night to reach New Eucla. Any stalker would have given up and returned before he did.

Mike and Alex were sitting at an outside table in front of what was both hostel and inn (where he and Billy had sat and chatted), the focus of attention for a small group. "The Sanctuary", proclaimed it's sign.

'There you are!' said Mike, greatly relieved that the horse was back in good condition. 'Here, I'll take her back to the couriers.'

'Doctor, these people come from Bedford and Willingham and Barralonga,' began Alex. 'Further up the coast towards Adelaide.'

Bowing politely, the Doctor asked if he could join them.

'I'll say!' laughed a lean, bronzed woman, clad in denim and with a slouch hat in her lap. 'You're the reason we're here.' She indicated Alex. 'Alex here's been telling us about life up in the Stars. Seems you got a few problems, eh?'

'Yes indeed,' replied the Doctor. 'As have you all.'

This was taken to mean the Death-Sats, to much nodding and pulling of long faces.

'I have important news for you coast people. I shall be making a statement tomorrow evening in the main town hall, and should like you to be there.'

'Why not tell us now?' asked an Asian man, prematurely bald, fanning himself with another of the ubiquitous slouch hats.

'We need to wait for the others to join us. Not only that, I have ridden a long way and need to find somewhere to stay the night, as does Alex.'

'I can help you with that,' said Mike, picking an appropriate time to return, slapping the Timelord on the shoulder. 'Come inside.'

The interior had oil-fired lanterns that flattered the plain wooden building, and a great robust desk that seated a small blond woman.

'Alice,' boomed Mike. 'These two, Doctor Smith and Alex, they're important visitors. Township funds'll pay for their stay.' He pointed a resolute finger at each traveller in turn. 'Don't run up a big tab!'

'We shall be the very models of probity,' said the Doctor, clutching his boater over his hearts. Looking slightly awestruck, Alice led them to the second floor and two rooms that were bare, functional and unfussy, but clean and appealling.

'I think I'll turn in right now, Doctor,' said Alex. 'I feel done in.'

He got a shrewd glance in return.

'Yes, I'm sure you do, I'm sure you do. But, before you do - ' and, wielding the sonic screwdriver, he proceeded to make a request that made the weary Alex frown in surprise.

Next morning brought more riders from more townships further along the coast, impelled by the courier mails to seek out the newest arrivals on their island continent. In all there were over twenty people, weatherbeaten and rangy, all immensely curious about the travellers.

Alex and his mentor came down to order a breakfast, after carefully hanging a "Do Not Disturb" sign on their assigned room, and came into abrupt confrontation with half a dozen of the new arrivals, who wanted to know who he was, where _exactly_ he came from, why he was here, who the boy was, when he'd be talking –

Beating a path to the front door and freedom with his hat, the Doctor tugged Alex after him.

'All in good time!' he called over a shoulder, running headlong into Mike.

'Blimey, you do attract trouble, doncha?' said an exasperated Assistant Mayor. 'Your lad looks a bit peaky.'

'Didn't sleep well,' mumbled Alex. Truth be told, his head throbbed and pulsed and he'd have given a great deal to get medical attention from Arc One's medical specialists.

Any pursuit had been delayed by cooked breakfast's arrival in the hotel, allowing them to steal away around the corner and towards the town hall, where they promptly ran into another group of coastal travellers led by Don, who looked unamused.

'Are you making trouble!' he asked, looking directly at Mike.

A chorus of questions immediately arose from the new arrivals, all bar one individual who looked distinctly different from the other worn but well-ordered denim-clad horsemen. His clothes were ragged and dirty, he clutched a long staff and his eyes wobbled oddly in their sockets.

Ah – one of the Wanderers, no doubt, calculated the Timelord, casting back to what Officer Kane had hinted at. The mentally-ill, or those unable to adapt to the post-Big Crash world.

'Hey, he brought the mare back intact,' replied Mike amidst the chatter of everyone around them.

'Please! If you want information, I _shall_ inform you. Eight o'clock in the town hall tonight. I trust that will be okay, Mayor Kenneally? Thank you. Meanwhile I have a sick colleague to see to.'

''S jus' a fever,' mumbled Alex, feeling even worse than he had a short while ago. Sweat stood out on his brow. His shoulders sagged. His eyes were an aching bloodshot red.

'Look you, the lad's sick,' pointed out one of the coasters.

'Get him to the doctor,' added another, backing off.

'I _am_ the Doctor – oh, sorry, I see. The apothecary, the phlebotomist, the sawbones. Don, does New Eucla have a doctor of medicine?'

Growling with ill-grace, Don directed them three streets over and one across, before gesturing to the crowd accompanying him.

'Come on, come on you lot, and you, too Ben. The township will pay for your overnight board, but without alcohol. You want beer, you pay for it …'

His voice faded away when they turned the corner, Mike still with them to the Doctor's surprise.

'I need to see to Alex,' he began, trying to lay out a claim to the young engineer.

The open, honest features of the town's Assistant Mayor clouded with worry.

'Maybe you can, Doctor Smith, but what I'm worried about is whether he's brought down any strange alien diseases to Australia. He looks pretty ill.'

To both human's surprise, the Doctor burst out laughing.

It took Alex a long time afterwards to assemble the facts and events into a sensible order. He realised later that the illness had begun to affect him at the end of his first day on Planet Earth, and that it wasn't anything caused by an incredibly distant horizon or psychosomatic symptoms. His temperature had gone up and stayed up, rendering him weak and fearful of light, as dizzy as someone oxygen-deprived, giving him fearful, forgotten nightmares in that unfamiliar hotel room. When he saw their original room in the light of day, his fever made it seem like an assault in an asylum. The Doctor plied him with water, giving him a whole jug of the stuff, water that still had a taste unlike the insipid version filtered and recycled half a billion times aboard Arc One.

Then they'd been the target of a rugby scrum in the hostel lobby, and he felt stupidly and inordinately proud to remember how the Australians loved rugby before being dragged outside into the cooler air of morning, where his rubber knees and cotton-wool head felt slightly better.

Then they'd run into a gang of strangers, whom Mike had rescued them from – or had he already been there? And then, the Doctor burst out laughing when Mike worried that he'd brought some deadly disease down from Arc One.

What had his reply been? That it was essential to see if the population up there could survive on Earth amidst all the micro-organisms that didn't exist on the arcologies, to which end he'd brought a fit, healthy adult as a guinea-pig. If Alex couldn't survive, then the survivors in orbit wouldn't be able to either, and they were all doomed.

Filtered by his illness, this had seemed enormously unfair to Alex, and he'd mumbled a complaint before they reached the big glass offices of the town's doctor. The Doctor had sternly warned him not to imagine that he'd really put another person's life at risk needlessly and that the Tardis was only a few minutes walk away if needed, while the grizzled Euclan doctor had prescribed water, quinine and rest. With a touch of persuasion and low, whispered conversation that Alex couldn't make out, the doctor had agreed to let the mechanic stay in the waiting room to ensure he didn't get any worse. Mike had exchanged a slip of paper that made the doctor seem happier, and then he'd been left on his own, in a quiet corner of the bright building with his jug of water and the horribly bitter medicine.

Shadows were getting longer when Mike came to retrieve him from a prolonged but uncomfortable doze. By then the headache, the pains and weakness were definitely passing.

'Doctor said to get you fed,' explained Mike. 'We'll go back to The Sanctuary. Feel up to eating?'

A growl from his stomach provided the answer. They took it slowly, and when Alex sat down to make a good effort upon a plate of grilled chicken, potatoes and carrots he realised that even more new faces had arrived. They kept up a tired chatter amongst themselves, asking how life was in their different townships.

'How long have I been asleep?'

Mike grinned ruefully.

'It's nearly seven, so about ten hours. Glad you feel better. You worried me, you know.'

When Alex pushed the empty plate away, the memory of this morning's bizarre experience in the bedroom came back. Seen through the lens of a fever, he felt he'd been hallucinating, and wanted to make sure he'd seen what he thought he'd seen.

'Can we go back to my room? I need to get a few things – I left my toolbox there.'

Mirkan 93 stood in front of the human slave, which had earlier exhibited all the symptoms of dull terror that habitually came to those who served the Lithoi in preference to their own kind. Mirkan 93 adjusted the neural-net processor over the human's head, getting the best purchase for the programming.

'You will kill Doctor John Sssmith,' hissed Mirkan 93, allowing his internal processor to broadcast. It wasn't possible to do this in the world at large because hearing people speak without moving their lips tended to create suspicion amongst humans.

'Iwillkilldoctorjohnsmith,' droned the slave, devoid of emotion, eyes watering, mouth slack and drooling. 'Iwillkilldoctorjohnsmith. Iwillkilldoctorjohnsmith. Iwillkilldoctorjohnsmith.'

'Enough!' hissed Mirkan 93, annoyed at the mindless repetition. Mental control was only good up to a certain point, after all. 'Since you have failed to kill him on at least two occasions already, if you fail again you will use this device. Use it in a crowd.'

'IfIfailusethisdevice,' droned the slave. Mirkan 93 pressed the small metal oval, complete with self-sealing suture, against the slave's bare chest, creating a brief stink of cauterised flesh as the edges glowed white hot. 'OWW - '

'Sssilence!' hissed Mirkan 93, and the slave obediently ceased complaining.

'Whatever the outcome, you are to destroy yourself,' added Mirkan 93. Leaving any loose ends behind would be a bad idea, especially given the drastic nature of what he was about to do.

'Destroymyself destroymyself destroymyself destroymyself,' babbled the human proxy, until Mirkan 93 stopped it physically, and began to prepare for the forthcoming revelation.

The Doctor felt the anxiety, and excitement, that came from trying to do several imporant things all at once. The not-quite-adrenaline of his Gallifreyan metabolism was helping him cope, thinking on the move.

First, he had to ensure Alex remained safe. The fever he'd expected the arcology resident to contract was debilitating but temporary, yet it left the young man vulnerable at a time when the hidden assassin would be desperately trying to get rid of these unwanted visitors from the Stars. So, a trip to the clinic and a hasty flattery of the doctor-in-residence allowed Alex to recover from fever whilst in safe company.

Next, he wanted to delay making his grand announcement in the evening to allow as many newcomers from other coastal communities to arrive. Still, he had to balance that with being stalked by the unidentified killer – even if he had a fairly good idea who it was – since the longer he waited, the more chances they had of striking and by the law of averages might be successful this time. To avoid becoming an easy target he made certain to stay on the well-worn main road that ran from Eucla to the Eyre Highway, safe under the eyes of dozens of working tradesmen or curious children after nursery or school finished. Doris came along and scooted the children on their way, much to their dismay after hearing a short display of birdsongs from the Northern Hemisphere. One girl trailed away with a gecko on a lead, obviously a pet kept for utility in getting rid of insects, rather than the pre-Big Crash cat or dog –

Aha! he realised, his mind flashing back to his earlier conversation outside The Sanctuary with young Barakan. Giant snakes, eh? Perhaps not snakes, say rather lizards-with-extensively-atrophied- limbs.

He tried to recall what Billy had told him about life in the outback. The young man's grandfather had relocated from Adelaide after the Little Crash, setting up a farm, raising crops and livestock. It hadn't been easy; Nathan Barakan had been a social worker with limited experience of practical farming, helped only by others from the city who foresaw a looming disaster. Come the Big Crash, his perceived actions had undergone an alteration, from pipe-dream to cold practicality. The "Townies" from Adelaide had been grateful for help and advice from the earlier decampers. Nathan's son, Billy's father, had grown up in the outback and relearnt the skills and talents needed to survive there. He'd told Billy of strange creatures he'd seen, mutations created by fall-out that died out without any other witnesses, descriptions of others that thrived: camels with six legs; dingoes much cleverer than any wild dog ought to be; giant snakes that walked upright; the infamous Hunting Spiders; giant ants with a toxic bite.

Those upright snakes had intrigued the Doctor. Subtly, without seeming to, he discovered that Harry, Billy's dad, had been lying in wait for wild sheep, hidden beneath a tarpaulin itself heaped over with dried earth. Not liking the look of the snakes, he'd kept silent and still and let them slowly walk on –

'Ha!' snapped the Doctor to himself, impressing himself with his own acuity. ' "Slowly"!' The jigsaw piece fell into place.

Equally abruptly, he realised he'd followed that young person into the back streets of New Eucla whilst thinking about his problem and possible solution. The tame gecko and girl vanished into the dusk and wooden walkways, leaving the Doctor alone with only the wind for company.

Time to head back to the Tardis, he realised, stopping and changing direction.

_sssssskkkkkkWHAM! _

A sudden and unwelcome coolness played over his temples. In a moment that would have looked good in a Chaplin or Keaton silent, he groped over his hair for the missing boater, realised it had been shot away and dropped flat.

_WHAM!_

This impact didn't have the hissing prelude of the previous one – which meant the missile,whatever it was, had missed by a greater margin.

'_Nye plastuny_,' he grated to nobody at all, suiting action to words and shimmying backwards. He felt slightly embarassed that Leo Tolstoy's greatest achievement in this century would have been teaching a Gallifreyan how to crawl Cossack-style.

_WHUD! _and a crossbow quarrel appeared in the ground, between the index and middle fingers of his left hand.

The fading daylight might also have played a part in his survival. Lying flat as he was, the shadows cast at dusk helped him to blend into the roadway.

Dancing to his feet and upright, the Doctor backed into the main north-south road in New Eucla, looking madly to left and right.

' – and that is how you perform the Black Bottom,' he declared to anyone listening. Not many of the Euclan's still working bothered to pay much attention to the stranger, who skipped off to his equally strange machine atop the ridge. There he spent an educational half hour, before realising what the time was, having to dash downhill and off to the town hall. En route he caught up with Mike, asking him to rouse Alex, get him fed and bring the young man to the town hall.

'Hello hello,' he boomed, windmilling his arms as he entered the big auditorium with at least forty faces staring at him. 'I know it's only seven o'clock but given the circumstances I think an earlier start is better than a later one.'

Half a dozen chairs had been set out on the stage, so he lightly vaulted up there and stood behind a hand-carved wooden lectern. Don and Lenny were already in the audience, and joined him. Neither looked happy at his barnstorming performace.

Where was Mike? He and Alex needed to turn up soon or they'd miss relevant facts.

The instant the hotel's room door swung open, Alex realised his fever dream of the morning had in fact been entirely factual.

Both beds had been viciously chopped about, the woollen blankets and thin linen sheets hacked so deeply that bedsprings could be seen, feathers lying across the wooden floor from split pillows.

The novel feature of the room, which definitely hadn't been there this morning, was the ghastly, mutilated corpse lying stiff and cold on the boards.

'Bloody hell!' gasped Mike. 'Ben. It's old Ben – the Wanderer.'

Alex gulped. The pathetic old man of the strange appearance and wobbly eyes had been split horizontally in his thorax, a huge gaping wound inflicted with inhuman strength by the axe that lay alongside him. And clutched in one bony hand was a familiar straw boater.

Mike turned to glare at the young man.

'I know _you're_ not responsible – you were at the clinic all afternoon. My God, to think we trusted your pal Doctor John Smith!'

'No, no – the beds were like that this morning! The Doctor and I slept in a different room - ' began Alex, to thin air, as Mike was off and running, the soft padding of his tyre-cut sandals fading quickly.

With less haste and a more sure and certain belief in his companion's innocence, Alex looked at the corpse with fear and curiosity.

Okay, he was a mechanic, not a doctor or nurse; he had an engineering background, not a medical one. Still, the laws of physics applied to human anatomy and this corpse looked – odd. For one thing, all the internal organs were gone. No heart or lungs or liver. No blood, either, not on the body or even in the body – he peered into the empty chest cavity to make sure – and not even on the supposed murder weapon.

Hang on – that chest cavity has been broken from the _inside_! he understood, seeing the flesh and bone bent outwards.

A quick look over the room didn't reveal either any blood or the missing internal organs.

'This is impossible,' he mused to himself. 'Unless - ' and he bent to press the old man's skin. Cold, inflexible and unyielding. Just like plastic, in fact. The Euclans might not be familiar with plastics but he, as a child of the Arcology, certainly was. He opened his toolkit, took out a pair of pliers and tapped the body's exposed sternum, which chipped, revealing a shiny interior to the supposed bone. Adopting a trick of his father's, he nibbled the piece broken off.

'Plastic!' he confirmed. 'What the hell is this thing! A robot designed to operate like a human being?'

Chewing the inside of his cheek, he turned the object over, to see if any clues were hidden beneath it. Nothing there – but it was ridiculously light, far lighter than a human being ought to be.

This thing that had masqueraded as a human being was going to get the Doctor into deep water. It was also proof positive of aliens here on Planet Earth – nobody Upstairs had the technology to create it and the Australians could only dream of technology like this.

Coming to a decision, he hefted the awkward thing – not a body, not any longer – over his shoulder and trotted out of the room.


	16. Chapter 17

CHAPTER TWELVE: Flesh and Blood

One reason the Doctor had decided to begin his informative and illuminating lecture at seven, not eight, was because it would wrong-foot whoever had been trying to kill him. Being the target of an unseen assassin lost it's charm very quickly. Then, too, the travelling parties from up and down the coast would be so eager to hear him that they'd probably all turn up well in advance. This turned out to be partly true; of the forty people assembled half were townsfolk from New Eucla. Doris took a seat alongside Don with much huffing, wielding her pen and paper to inform people that her presence as official recorder mattered for something.

'Thank you for coming all the way here to New Eucla,' he began, nodding at the coastal parties and wishing his hat wasn't astray with a crossbow bolt through it. 'What I have to say may sound incredible – no, actually it _will_ sound incredible – but is essential for your survival. Firstly, you are not alone - '

With a thunderous bang, the double doors into the hall were bashed open and a furious Mike stormed into the meeting, his normally sunny face twisted into a scowl.

'Mike! Pleased you could make it!' began the Doctor, recognising a man in the grip of strong emotions and not liking it. Had he mistaken which township member was under the sway of aliens?

'You murdering bugger!' snarled Mike, kicking chairs aside to get to the stage quicker. 'Killing a defenceless old man!'

A clutch of other coastal travellers followed him into the hall, having followed him from The Sanctuary and his brief, curse-ridden explanation.

Taken aback at this accusation, the Doctor clutched his hands behind his back and sat down, presenting as meek a countenance as possible.

'I've no idea what you refer to,' he explained. 'I can assure you I've killed nobody.'

This didn't slow Mike and his group of followers, who came stamping and champing up onto the stage.

'Old Ben! A Wanderer!' growled Mike, forcefully prodding the Timelord's chest with a brawny finger. 'Just about the most harmless person you could pick on. You saw him in that lot with Don in the back alley.'

The other coasties came in close to see what the stranger had to say for himself, and Mirkan 93's slave saw the opportunity to use that unexplained device now, while a crowd assembled.

'I've no idea what you're talking about,' said the Doctor simply, trying to exude innocence from his very pores.

'You chopped him up with an axe!' growled Mike, reaching forward to grab the smaller man's upper bicep, an action that he regretted instantly as an umbrella handle insinuated itself between his feet and he fell backwards.

The other coasties were not impressed with this self-defence – the Doctor considered it pretty impressive since it was from a seated position and involved no more than three inches movement of his right hand – and a dozen pairs of hands dragged him from the chair.

'We ought to skin him alive and roll him in salt,' suggested an Asian man, sweating heavily.

Another person produced a very large Bowie knife, easily a foot long.

'Sounds good to me. Or maybe just stick 'im, pig-killing fashion.'

Back on his feet, Mike delivered a right cross that the Doctor only just saw coming, managing to flex with the punch and minimise the impact, which nevertheless left his ears ringing; the Assistant Mayor had good technique and a lot of venom.

'I say we find a twenty foot length of hemp and stretch his neck,' said the Assistant Mayor, a wild look in his eyes.

With an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach that made his jaw seem hale by comparison, the Doctor realised things were seriously awry here.

'Fold up a few chairs and tenderize him first,' added another person from behind, delivering a painful blow to the right kidney, then the left, then the right again.

The clutching hands grew even tighter, if that was possible. Alarmed cries and calls from those of the audience still sitting came to the Timelord's ears.

'What do you think you're doing!'

'You'll kill him! Pack it in!'

Aggression far in excess of the norm, realised the Doctor. These people were being stoked to levels of aggression by an external agency – which intelligent insight didn't help him out of the jam he was in, as a belt was draped over his neck and tightened with such speed that it burnt his skin. Another blow came to his jaw, and that assailant from behind struck again.

'Stop it! Stop it!' came a woman's voice, getting closer – only to be punched away by eager fists. A shout of anger came from the hall's floor, as the Doctor's vision began to blur.

'IF YOU'RE GOING TO KILL HIM YOU'D BETTER BE SURE HE KILLED A HUMAN BEING!' came a bellow from the entrance doors. The fervour of his attackers dropped for a second.

Not being human, and having the advantage of several centuries more life experience than anyone on Earth, and with an alien metabolism, and having studied cross-species applicable yoga in Tibet, the Doctor put his crash focus into operation.

Time slowed down. Not a temporal trick, this was his perception speeding up by a factor of twenty.

Observation: this crowd is being provoked by methods unknown to heights of aggression far beyond anything normal or acceptable.

Method: can't be a gas, the auditorium is too large for any such effect; anything capable of such an effect would be fatal. Those people still in the audience aren't raging homicidal zealots, either.

Directional, then. A beam. Narrow focus, or everyone in here would be stampeding onto stage to kill me.

Nothing happened until Mike and the others crowded me. Aha! There had to be a focus for their aggression, or they'd just attack each other. So, this directional beam is being directed by an observer on the spot, it's not timed to operate at a set moment.

And the attention of that director was diverted when Alex made his life-saving – at least I hope it's life-saving! – entrance, directing the beam away from me. The device used must be hidden, or it would make people suspicious. Got it. I know what it is.

He grasped at the sonic screwdriver in his jacket pocket and aimed in the approximate direction of where he thought the beam originated, just as his attackers renewed their assault with fresh vigour. A press of the operating stud –

Actions returned to their normal speed. A faint fizzing noise came over the seething crowd determined to kill him –

who suddenly and promptly fell back and away from him.

'What the hell!' exclaimed Mike, staring at the Doctor, his knuckles, the crowd around him and

the audience now surging forward to rescue the diminutive victim. He suddenly reeled, clutching his head. 'Oh Jeez – my head's gonna split!'

The lynch mob fell apart in pain and bewilderment. Two people were violently sick.

'You hit Doris!' came a low, threatening snarl from Lenny on the other side of the stage. When the Doctor looked over, he saw the weeping figure of Doris, clutching her chin and staunching a trickle of blood.

'Er – ah – I assure you - ' blustered the Doctor as the wiry little man produced a long, thin blade from a boot.

'Not you, you numpty. Him!' and the other Assistant Mayor pointed at the balding Asian man, who looked horror-struck.

'Oh! Miss Persson! Miss Persson! I'm so sorry! I don't know – what – I don't know -' he began, then burst out crying.

To egg an already over-rich pudding, Alex paced onto the stage, dropping his linen-clad bundle and toolbox.

'Like I said, if you bunch of - ' and here he demonstrated his quick adoption of Australian slang and swear-words for the space of ten seconds ' – want to kill the Doctor, make sure he really killed someone in the first place.'

'He chopped up old Ben,' came the low reply from Mike, dealing with a nosebleed. Now that the fervent bloodlust had dimmed, his actions appeared less than rational and more than rabid.

'Really. You think the Doctor killed Ben with an axe? Idiot! Those beds were chopped to bits the night before. The Doctor warned me that we might be targets, so we slept in a different room. I thought it was silly, until we looked in the next morning.'

A thousand different permutations of puzzled glances ran between the audience.

'Where's the blood!' asked Alex. 'You kill someone with an axe, there's going to be litres of blood. Where's Ben's internal organs? You know, his heart and lungs and intestines and liver and kidneys.'

Mike stared back, bereft of any inspiration.

'Did the hotel report any buckets or mops stained with litres of blood? That they'd found a whole set of vital parts? There isn't even any blood on the supposed murder weapon!'

A lot of hard looks were being directed at Mike, who looked pale and unsteady.

'Let me show you a thing or two,' said Alex, unrolling his bundle, to reveal the contorted and mutilated shape previously known as "Ben". 'No blood. A giant cavity in the mid-section and a big hole in the middle that, as far as I can see, leads down to the left leg.'

A chorus of gasps and whispers went up.

'Pay attention!' said Alex, glancing at the Doctor, who nodded encouragingly whilst massaging his neck. 'This skin – it's not skin. It's plastic.' He used a pair of needle-nose pliers to worry a piece of tissue free and threw it amongst the listeners. 'This isn't bone – it's a kind of moulded resin. A type of lightweight plastic,' he clarified, aware that the Euclans and coasties didn't know the first thing about plastics. He used a miniature hammer to shatter several ribs, which broke in a fashion so different to normal human bone that the watchers were convinced straight away. For his _piece de resistance_, Alex put one foot firmly on the object's shoulder, grasped the upper bicep and pulled whilst twisting in both directions at once. With a nasty metallic scrunch, the whole arm came loose, trailing lubricating carbon gel, copper wiring, hydraulic cables and a plastic universal joint. Then he took a powered handsaw and cut directly into the android's "face", down the length of the nose. Fumes and screeching sounds came as he severed metal and plastic, cutting the whole head in two, revealing masses of compact electronic wafers and circuitry but no bone or brain.

'Ben was a robot?'

'Where's the real Ben?'

'What was inside it?'

Straightening himself, the Doctor cleared his throat in best attention-getting manner.

'Ahem! An android, actually, by definition. And there never was a "real" Ben. This construct existed so that an alien could walk around amidst human communities without detection.'

'What's up with your chest?' mumbled Doris. The Timelord heard and whirled around to see Don nervously getting up, a hand held across his shirt.

'Nothing. 's my Mayoral badge,' he muttered.

'Not it's not. I can see that chain in your pocket,' said Lenny, keen eyes picking out the elaborately worked silver links.

The Doctor retrieved his umbrella and pointed it at Don like a rifle.

'It's an alien device, an infrasonic generator designed to amp up human aggression to killing levels.'

The collective of coasties and Mike on the stage stared at the Doctor, then back at Don.

'Let's see what's under that shirt, Don,' hissed Lenny, the knife back in his hand.

Don turned to see other members of the audience were blocking the exit from the stage. Licking his lips, he suddenly threw himself at Lenny, trying to impale himself on the knife –

- which got twitched out of the way by a deftly-wielded umbrella handle, causing Don and Lenny to go down in a tangle of arms and legs.

'Get hold of him! He's trying to kill himself!' shouted the Doctor. A dozen brawny hands laid hold of the mayor and dragged him upright, incidentally tearing his shirt open.

Thoughtfully, the Doctor sucked his teeth. A metallic disk the size of man's palm had been apparently welded into Don's chest, angry-looking scars running around the circumference.

'What the hell's going on, Don!' snarled Mike. 'What's that thing in your chest?'

'I was about to begin explaining this when you interrupted, Mike. I didn't realise how determined and drastic these aliens are. One of them has blown their collective cover, and incidentally provided concrete evidence of their existence.' He turned to Alex and bowed. 'Thank you for coming to my rescue!'

The rest of the lecture ran slowly, as other coasties and Euclans came in to listen, passing on information to each other on what had been happening to Don and the Doctor and Ben and Alex and Mike –

The mythical "Death-sats" took a little explaining, until the Doctor ferretted out the fact that Don as Mayor habitually received the courier mails before anyone else, and did judicious pruning and editing to prevent the revelation that other Australian communities were beginning to progress beyond horse-and-cart technology. Alex backed this up by explaining that the Americans had been talking via radio links for seven years.

'There's also a clue in your cemetery,' added the Doctor, remembering that unusually bright badge of trade. ' "Patutastas Aparatista" is Tagalog for "Radio Operator", and Tagalog is only spoken in the Phillipines. At a guess, a ship from the Phillipines came dangerously close to making contact with your coastal communities, so our alien residents destroyed it.' After a pause he added another four words guaranteed to arouse strong emotions. 'As they did Forrest.'

Occasional questions were directed at Don, who ignored them, as he did everything else. When this statement about the destruction of Forrest fell on the audience, an ugly-sounding collective whisper could be heard – directed at the hapless Mayor.

'Not a bush fire?' asked Mike. He had settled down on a stage chair, beginning to take a closer interest in the Doctor's inflammatory statements now that his agonising headache had diminished to merely painful.

'No. I looked at the bush around Forrrest. Burned no more than a few dozen metres beyond the town. The prevailing winds ought to have carried any fires _away_ from the town, not into it. And since when did you hear of a fire so sudden that it overwhelmed a whole town instantly? Not even horses in harness were able to escape. The Arcology's Dart was the real target. This supposed "bush fire" managed to make the craft's skin turn molten, despite there being an absence of any bush or trees near it.'

A member of the coastal visitors stood up amidst the audience. Tanned and seamed of skin, he took off his hat and stared at the Doctor.

'What do these bloody aliens want? And what can we do about it!'

Having retrieved his dusty, holed and now scuffed boater from Alex, the Doctor pushed it back on his head and looked back at the speaker.

'Good question – ah - '

'Seamus.'

'Seamus. These aliens want Earth, make no mistake about that. Don't be too hard on Don, he didn't carry out mischief of his own free will, these wretched infiltrators have messed about with his mind so that he does their bidding, and so did the people who began the Big Crash and perpetuated it.'

Seeing that this created a sense of worry and unease, he hurried on.

'As to what you can do, Seamus, you and all the coastal people – er, "coasties". You can return to your own townships and pass on what I've told you tonight. These aliens greatest asset was their secrecy – nobody knew about them and they were careful not to bring any attention down upon themselves. That's gone now.'

Which was rather worrying – taking a drastic step like revealing the existence of a Wanderer as an android infiltrator spoke of desperate measures. He'd not expected such a ill-considered response.

Standing to one side of the stage, Alex asked a pertinent question, kicking the remnants of the android lying at his feet.

'What about this thing? Are there going to be more like them?'

'Ah! Good question! I don't know. I suspect there may be more. Coasties! Please keep an eye open for people who behave like Ben – unable to converse properly or fit into the townships.'

'You can't pick on all the Wanderers. There's hundreds of them!' objected a speaker in the audience – that doctor from the sanitarium who'd kept an eye on Alex.

'Oh, these ones will stand out,' replied the Doctor, drolly. 'They won't wash. They won't go out in the rain. They will not eat and they most certainly won't ever, ever drink.'

To tie matters up, the Doctor warned everyone present that rash, impetuous action against these aliens would be disastrous. They had killed billions already, directly or indirectly, and dealing with an army of barely-armed people from the coastal communities would present them with no greater problem than a man killing an insect with a fly-swatter.

There had been complaints, inevitably. Inaction after such earth-shaking revelations didn't sit easily with the coasties.

'Oh, don't worry. I have my own fly-swatter in waiting. Look to the oceans in the next forty-eight hours and be ready to move.'

The words "fly-swatter" were spoken in a tone that carried such menace that there were no questions. Alex felt impressed and not a little awed that the small man could invest such an inoccuous phrase with enough gravitas to still the lively questions of the Australians.

'Hello Arcology One, hello Arcology One,' chirped the Doctor into his radio transciever. Unxpectedly, Ace didn't answer.

'Yes? Is that Doctor Smith?' came a sickly voice at the other end. Barclay, if memory served.

'It certainly is. Where's Ace? Listen, I need you to use Pangolin to carry out a very important mission in orbit, essential for the survival - '

Barclay interrupted before he could finish with a wheezing, croaky voice.

'Damn you, Doctor! Don't you know we've got the plague up here! Everyone is infected!'


	17. Chapter 18

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: End of the Line

Ace suspected, correctly, that her being sent Upstairs with Terry had more than one purpose. She had sat alongside him, only vaguely interested in the questions that the Founder's offspring asked, pondering at length on what else she might be expected to do up here. "At length" was no figure of speech: the Founder's descendants were well into their second hour of questioning Terry.

The Doctor had probably second-guessed that his radio transceiver, best-quality UNIT issue, would be appropriated by one of the Arc crew. Typically devious! Why couldn't he just hand it over to them? Then again – he had been very insistent that she didn't part with it.

She sighed. How many levels of manipulation was he working on this time!

Having drifted off into this semi-reverie (very wide of the mark, if she did but know), she realised with a start that the woman, Emilia, had just spoken to her.

'Sorry, chief, miles away. What'd you say?'

Emilia sighed in a heavily put-upon way that immediately put Ace's back up. Snooty cow! She might be the offspring of whoever paid for the sphere; it didn't make her Queen.

'I said, we need to debrief you about your time spent Downstairs.'

Ace glanced at Terry, still deep in discussion about Australian insect life as he had been for twenty minutes.

'Me? I wasn't down there for more than a few hours.'

Once again came the put-upon sigh.

'Dorothy, nobody here has ever set foot on Earth, not for a millisecond. Your information would be absolutely invaluable, really. Will you help?'

This request was put so politely that Ace overlooked the disliked forename and the put-upon sigh that followed.

'Uh – yes, if you really want me to help,' she replied, as sulkily as she dared.

Emilia smiled a sincere smile and Tabbed for a biologist to come and collect her.

'They'll take you over to Broughton, less distracting than sitting in this big empty hall with us chattering away.'

The biologist turned out to be a very tall, thin Nigerian man with no apparent sense of humour, who led Ace off on a short, rapid almost-run to Broughton. This townstead followed the usual arcology pattern of being dedicated to a particular science or trade, grouped around a central building that housed communal facilities. Ace half-expected to see cages of mice and monkeys, shelves of petri dishes, lab rats enduring hideous experiments; instead the area hid itself behind potted palms, ferns and bonsai trees. One wall did have a fantastic array of resin sculptures of the human body and internal organs, sculptures that looked very life-like.

Solly, as he introduced himself, sat Ace down on one side of a small wicker table, produced an electronic notepad and began to scribe. First he allowed her to rattle off her account of arriving in Adelaide, meeting Officer Kane and then whizzing off to New Eucla. Having gotten an outline, he then went back over her perceptions of Adelaide and seemed most interested in the plant life, asking detailed questions and using botanical terms she didn't understand. Her curiosity and impatience ran out within the hour and she asked her own questions.

'Why are you so interested in fertility and "fecundity"? and what's "biome accretion coefficient"?'

For the first time since they met, Solly showed an emotion – surprise.

'Oh. Of course. You don't know our priorities. We need to know how well crops will grow and whether or not our livestock will survive and thrive when we get back Downstairs. Currently all our data is theoretical.' He looked at her with his analytical gaze before volunteering more. 'From orbit we can't determine essential biological data. Like the biome accretion coefficient.'

He then went back over the wildlife she'd seen in Adelaide, what there had been of it – mostly birds, with unseen scuttling lizards hiding in ferns and roadside bracken, and Officer Kane's horse, and then Solly diverged into an anlysis of the officer's woollen clothing and his horse's leather harness.

By this time Ace teetered on the edge of boredom-induced sleep, balanced only by hunger. To her mixed amusement, embarassment and relief, a loud gurgling came from her stomach.

'Any danger of a meal? My stomach thinks my throat's cut.'

The mixed idioms visibly puzzled Solly.

'Food?' pantomimed Ace, eating with an imaginary knife and fork.

'Ah! I see,' said the Nigerian, gravely. 'I shall Tab my wife.'

Ace's conscience prompted her to protest weakly when Solly's wife, an equally tall, thin Nigerian possessing an air of poise and who made a boilersuit look elegant, swept out of a building with trays of snacks and toasted rolls. When she returned with a carafe of iced water, the young woman felt like crawling under the table.

'Really, I don't need all this, honestly.'

Two pairs of sombre eyes regarded her for at least a second until her embarassment at having put them out was overcome by her hunger.

'Where can Terry and I get a bed?' she asked after clearing her plate, twice. 'I know you're overstaffed and there's a shortage of accomodation.'

'We would - ' began Solly's wife, before Ace anticipated her and broke in.

'Davros! Doctor Davy – he'd know, wouldn't he! Can you Tab him?'

Solly tried, and got the "Occupied" signal. He tried again five minutes later, and got the same repetitive beeping.

'I'll go and visit him,' explained Ace brightly. 'Kensington, right?'

She didn't get beyond the twilit edge of Broughton; Solly hailed her and came after to explain.

'I've just got a Tab from Ewan. They're bringing Terry over to you. Davy is busy – a medical problem. We can put up temporary bedding for you in the common area.'

Ace shrugged. Oh well, less travel for her. She couldn't deny she was tired. Jumping around continents and planets and orbits for days on end did play tricks on your body's internal clock.

When Terry arrived he looked as tired as she felt, his voice reduced to a hoarse croak after endless hours of talking to an audience of eager inquisitors, whom he said were reduced to quite as hoarse a state as himself; he could have done with a honey and lemon balm, except the arcology didn't have bees or citrus fruits (only sucrose and Vitamin C pills). Ace towed him into the common building and an area partitioned off with shoulder-high screens, a pair of wicker bed frames put out for them, white plastic boilersuits laid on a pair of scuffed plastic chairs and space blankets hanging on the screens.

'This is for us to kip on,' she told him. 'I'll get changed on the other side.'

Terry held up a space blanket, frowning.

'What, done up like a Christmas chicken?'

'No! Haven't you – oh – of course. It's a space blanket. Lined with reflective foil that keeps your body heat in.'

'No proper blankets?'

'Hardly. Do you see any sheep or cotton plantations up here? That's lightweight and recyclable. Now, I'm going to get changed. No looking.'

Davros looked at the makeshift ward, twenty four beds, each occupied by a patient, leaving only six free. Glancing back at the entrance, he saw Paramedic Prakasz shaking her head with worry.

Poor girl! he suddenly realised. Her husband had gone down with the disease in Chetwell four hours ago and now she was witnessing signs of the later stages.

'Davy?' buzzed his Tab. Marga, from microbiology.

'Yes?

'Nothing recognisable. It must have come up with those two travellers. Given time I can isolate it but you need to quaratine them.'

Too late for _that_, gloomily reflected the doctor. As of thirty minutes ago over a thousand people scattered across Arcology One were afflicted.

'Thanks, Marga. Keep trying. Let me know about anything you find.'

He pressed his Tab's red emergency button three times, sending a signal out to all Tabs across the whole sphere.

'Your attention please. This is Director Davros. Please pay attention, and pass this message on to anyone unable to hear it.' He paused to gather his wits, and breath, before carrying on. 'An unknown disease has infected almost one in ten of the sphere population. Until we come up with a cure, please remain in your township. If possible, remain in your building. If you succumb to illness after this broadcast, please Tab one of the Wardens and we will render palliative care.'

A big step to take, declaring a curfew. It had happened only once before, when they'd had the micro-meteorite breach, because shutting down movement choked off fifty per cent of activity. Food, repairs, livestock, water, crops, medicine, they all needed to get about by foot now that there was almost no other transport left.

What could have caused this infection!

He blindly walked over to an empty bed and sat on it, making the bamboo frame creak.

Think. Think like a doctor and a scientist.

Doctor John Smith and Ace were unlikely suspects. They'd visited before, without the slightest effect. Terry – ah, now he was a possible Patient Zero.

Except he'd been DCTM'd by Doctor Smith before arriving here. The young man had been kept in the common area at Lichfield with the Founders and had gone straight from there to Broughton, where he was now soundly asleep. This debilitating disease had broken out at five different townships scattered across the sphere, one after another. So how could he be responsible?

The micro-organism responsible couldn't be airborne, or the infected would be spread evenly across the inner sphere and both he and Paramedic Prakasz would have contracted it by now. On the other hand, if it spread by contact, how on earth did it get to so many places that Terry didn't visit?

'Doctor Davros?' asked the worried Paramedic, having abandoned her post at the tent's entrance.

'Hmm? Yes?'

'How bad is this infection going to get?'

Casting a look around, he sighed.

'I don't know, Liz. It spread like crazy, took me totally by surprise, there's nothing like it in the files and I'm a glorified GP at best, not an epidemiologist. Nobody has died from it, at least.'

He and the other medical staff from Lichfield, who had gone out to tackle the disease where it arose, were treating symptoms instead of finding a cure, which they were relying upon Microbiology in Harrow to create.

"Given time." How much did they have! This crisis put the entire sphere population at risk, even before they began to deal with how to get back Downstairs. These victims, lying comatose or groaning, these were people who now had less than no hope left –

A stumbling silhoutted figure fumbled with the tent flaps, managed to untie them and came unsteadily inside, a person wearing the silver-banded boilersuit of a Warden. Davros recognised the sandy hair of Barclay, and that the man had the disease already. He looked shockingly pale, dripped with sweat, stared wildly from bloodshot eyes and carried a strange, retro-looking metal cylinder.

'Here,' he grated at the device. 'I'm with Davros now. Yes, he's wearing gloves.'

Propping himself up against one of the tent's poles, Barclay offered the strange device to Davros, who took it with reluctance.

'Doctor Davros?' came a tinny little voice from the cylinder, and Davy realised it was a miniature radio transceiver of very dated origin, nothing as sophisticated as the sphere's Tabs.

'Yes. Who is – oh! – Doctor Smith!' he spluttered.

'Indeed,' came the voice, and even though the faint reproduction was bad, the small man's cold anger came across with chilling weight. 'And you are looking at both the source of your mystery plague and Patient Zero.'

Barclay tottered over to an empty bamboo bed and draped himself across with all the presence of a banana skin.

'_K'nerek_!' blurted Davy, reverting to Armenian for a second. 'What the hell do you mean!'

'I gave Ace strict instructions _not _to allow anyone access to this radio. For the very good reason that it's contaminated with micro-organisms from Australia that your sphere's population have no resistance to. Ace and I have our own immune systems that destroyed any such infection before it could spread. The transciever has no such defence.'

His face flushed with anger, Davy turned to glare, tight-lipped and biting his tongue, at the invalid Warden. Barclay ignored him, panting heavily.

'You allowed it to be brought aboard Arc One!' continued Davy, almost as angry at Doctor Smith as he was with Barclay.

'There's no risk unless prolonged intimate contact is involved, which is why Ace wouldn't have handed it over,' sighed the other voice. The tone changed. 'Any fatalities?'

'No, God be thanked!' Davy responded like a medic. 'Also, Barclay is exaggerating. The disease isn't a plague, _bacillus pestis_ or anything like that – for which we are grateful – and is more like - '

'A fever with high temperature, debilitating pains, light sensitivity, nausea, yes, yes, yes.'

'How did you know?' asked a bewildered Davy. Could the little man see into orbit from Downstairs?

'Alex has already suffered a similar attack in New Eucla. It passed within a day. I suggest you triage your patients and devote the most care and pharmaceutical attention to the old, the very young and the infirm. Everyone else will get better on their own.'

A nasty suspicious feeling came over Davy.

'Doctor Smith, did you intend to deliberately spread this disease up here?'

'Certainly not!' came the indignant response, followed closely by an embarassed cough. 'I intended to use Alex as a guinea pig, to see if you lot could survive Downstairs without being wiped out by novel diseases. You can.'

'Pretty cold-blooded,' accused Davy.

'You wouldn't have let me bring him if I'd told you the whole story. Now, I need to speak to Ace, quickly.'

Davy Tabbed the nearest healthy person to bring Ace and Terry over to the temporary tent ward, then sat back to chew a nail and think.

Arcology One had, purposely, never been intended to be sterile. If it had, then when the crew returned to Earth they would have died in short order from a thousand different micro-organisms they had absolutely no resistance to. Since the last member came aboard there hadn't been any outbreaks of serious communicable diseases thanks to the lengthy screening process for the original crew two generations ago. Now they faced a disease from Downstairs that had never been encountered before, a disease doubtless completely benign to the Australians since they'd grown up with it, and which the terrestrial dwelling Ace and Doctor could shrug off un-noticed. A bug mutation from the outback, bred from fallout and flu.

On the positive side of the balance, Arc One's population were fit, active, well-fed, healthy individuals with access to medical care beyond anything imaginable Downstairs. No obesity, idleness, poor nutrition or substance abuse existed on the sphere. Nobody had died from this outbreak of – what could they call it?

'Barclay's Bug,' said Davy aloud, with a touch of malicious amusement whilst looking at the twitching Warden.

'Is Ace there yet?' asked the tinny, anxious voice from the radio.

'Not yet.'

'I'd return to Arc One to help, Doctor Davros, if circumstances here weren't so grave.'

That got his attention. How could it not!

'How bad is it?'

'Oh, no actions from our alien squatters – yet. But I've forced their hand, and they've forced mine. Things are going to hot up very soon and I'm needed down here even more than Upstairs. Nor can I be too explicit on this broadcast.'

'Oh – eavesdroppers.'

Davy felt silly having said the word the instant it left his mouth. "Eavesdroppers", aliens whom nobody had ever seen, carrying out indirect actions to the detriment of humanity, like the invisible Dev spirits of his ancestral homeland.

Ace and Terry came into the tent, looking with alarm at those stricken and lying on their hastily made beds. Prakasz hurried over to them.

'Blimey! Is it catching?' blurted Ace. The nurse ignored her and herded both over to Davy. Both young people caught sight of Barclay lying, moaning and sounding very sorry for himself, half on and half off a bed.

'The Doctor,' announced Davy, handing over her transceiver.

'Ace! Are you alright? Never mind, no time to chat. I need you to intercept one of those horses we first encountered when we arrived and give it a good punt, a right mouthful, put it at the back of the onion-bag, in the middle of the lowest Australia as defined by the Communications map.'

This bizarre message made no sense to Ace and it was lucky that Davy transcribed it onto his electronic notepad for later recall.

'I've got to organise down here so this is all in your hands, Ace.'

She stared at the minute speaker. What? What was the Doctor raving about now! If all these people on Arc One were ill, had he contracted their illness himself, making him babble nonsense?

'Professor, what the bl-'

Before she could finish her coarse question, the speaker emitted a continual and unpleasantly piercing high-pitched squeal that ended all radio communication from Eucla, then and afterwards.

Davy looked at the device with astonishment. Someone was jamming the broadcast from Downstairs! His disbelief about alien infiltrators dropped a quantum level.

'Okay, what the devil was that message about, Ace?'

The young woman shook her head in worry.

'Davy, I have absolutely no idea!'

The Director looked at his shoes, then at the occupied clinic beds. That Smith man compressed a great deal of intellect and ability into a small physique, he didn't talk nonsense for it's own sake and knowing that there existed every possibility of being cut off with every passing second, he'd not babble meaningless chatter to his contact aboard the arcology.

That strange message was important, very important – if only they could make sense of it!


	18. Chapter 19

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Just Another High

With a look of disgust, the Doctor cast down the now useless transceiver, before repenting and swooping to pick it up again. He had been about to give a detailed description of the aliens before those very same aliens woke up, realised a two-way communication was going on and cut it off.

Now they'd probably send in their aircraft, the one equipped with a thermal killing weapon of devastating effectiveness, against which the Euclans could bring crossbows, and perhaps a few shotguns, and maybe an ancient and unreliable automatic or two from the Big Crash era.

On the other side of the Mayor's desk, the side reserved for non-Mayors, two hefty farmers kept a firm hold on Don, who had been comprehensively roped into immobility. In fact his bonds – a band of ropes a metre high keeping his arms bound to his sides – constituted a restriction on his breathing.

The Doctor tipped his chair back, making the legs creak, pushed his hat back and dug his thumbs into his knitted waistcoat, pursed his lips and frowned, deep in thought.

Battle had been joined. The enemy were revealed, and knew they were now exposed to scrutiny and attack. What he must gamble upon was a degree of complacency amongst the aliens, that their century or more of lead time in technology would mean a delay in attacking New Eucla because they had little or nothing to fear from the Townies.

Who, he decided, had little choice but to leave. When faced with a fight on unequal terms the chicken option served best. Persuading the Euclans of the need to leave in a hurry would be difficult; he missed Ace and her ability to put high-concepts over to her fellow humans in easily understood terms.

'You've been sitting there like a statue for five minutes,' commented the other occupant of the room: Mike, who had now assumed the role of Mayor.

'I'm plotting.'

'Plotting? Plotting what?'

'How to get the population of New Eucla away before the Lithoi attack your township, as they most certainly will, and probably all too soon.'

Unexpectedly, Don jerked upright in a body spasm when the Doctor uttered that strange word "Lithoi". Mike scowled at the silent captive, looking back at Doctor Smith for an explanation. When none came, he asked, for his own satisfaction.

'A Gallifreyan joke. Gallifrey – my home pl- er, my home. Lithoi translates as "Those made of stone".' Mike and the two farmers keeping hold of Don all looked puzzled. 'Not literally made of stone, although there are some species that are, such as the Ogri – anyway, they were dubbed that since they have a very slow metabolism.'

His huge leather-bound reference books in the TARDIS, ancient dusty tomes with vellum pages, showed the evolution of the Lithoi from lizards that crawled out of primeval seas, via scampering omnivores slithering in the barren desert, into erect creatures with atrophied limbs using computer technology to keep ahead of predators and other life-forms possessed of greater speed. Without that technology they were slow, clumsy and very little threat, except to slugs, sloths and limpets.

Unfortunately the Lithoi were practically built into their computer support. They didn't travel anywhere without it.

'I think boats will do it.'

'Sorry?' asked Mike, wondering if he was being slow or foolish or both, and whether Doctor Smith ever stopped to explain himself fully.

'Boats, Mike, boats. For evacuation.'

The two farmers guarding Don looked worried, and Mike sat back on his chair, puzzled. Evacuate a couple of thousand people by sea? Tricky, and extremely unpleasant for anyone who got seasick.

'Folks can walk, you know.'

The Doctor looked craftily at Don.

'Yes, but as Don here probably knows and won't tell, the Lithoi hate and detest free-standing water. They've evolved to do without it and in fact it will render them extremely ill if they encounter liquid water in any amount.'

Mike snapped his fingers.

'Oh, I see! They'll keep away from the sea? Ah, and this is why they live in the desert!'

The Doctor nodded. After looking at his reference files, the use of a "Transport" to carry Lithoi into human society undetected performed two functions at once: allowing infiltration, and keeping the lizard hiding within safely dry and free from moisture.

He stood up and caused his chair to topple backwards.

'Come on, Mike! Time's a-wasting. If my trusty assistant Upstairs gets her wits working we may only have a few hours grace.'

Upstairs, the trusty assistant would have been flattered and worried at being so described. Flattered, since the Prof rarely came out and expressed any overt emotions that concerned their relationship, and worried, because the bizarre message made no sense to her.

"I need you to intercept one of those horses we first encountered when we arrived and give it a good punt, a right mouthful, put it at the back of the onion-bag, in the middle of the lowest Australia as defined by the Communications map".

She pored over the text, printed off by Davy whilst he carried on tending to the sick. The starchy and efficient nurse that came with him had informed Ace and Terry that over two and a half thousand people were sick with Barclay's Bug, rendering most of the arcology's functions barely capable of functioning. Davy sent them back to the common room at Lichfield. Less risk of infection, he explained. Quieter, too.

When Terry looked at the strange message, his sporty Antipodean heritage meant he got two of the references that had escaped Ace.

' "Punt" and "onion bag" are football terms. A punt is a kick and an onion bag is what they call the goal.'

'It's the horse thing that gets me. Arc One has cows, and chickens and a few other livestock. They never bothered with draught animals because they get human beings to do all the physical work, so there aren't any horses.'

This seemed a strange omission to Terry, who had grown up with the horse as Eucla's principal means of transport.

'Wasn't one of those Founder people a vet? Might they know?' he suggested, to a bright smile from Ace.

'Bingo! Earning your lunch-money! Let's go find her.'

A ten minute excursion and asking people to Tab for the vet brought them back to Lichfield; Emilia was suffering from Barclay's Bug and lay on her own in her rooms, sweating and coughing feebly. A half-empty bottle of water stood on the wicker table next to her bed. She looked up sharply when the pair of young people swept aside the door-curtain and entered, only to relax and fall back onto her sweat-stained mattress.

'Thought you were my husband come back. I chased him away. Physical contact transmits the bacteria, you know.'

Ace flushed with shame when she realised that this woman's "put-upon" cough during their interview had actually been the beginnings of this disease.

'Are you okay to talk?' asked Terry. 'Only we've got a problem.'

Emilia looked directly at them. No, Davy hadn't told them yet. Damn. Well, as a Founder scion she took responsibility.

'We have more than that. The first fatalities have occurred. Three people so far.'

Ace reared back as if slapped, and Terry bit his knuckle. Emilia waved a hand.

'Not your fault, it's that cretin Barclay. Enough of that. What is your problem?'

They explained, falling over themselves verbally to get the message across, before showing her the printed paper that Davy gave them.

A faint memory, like a tickle on the brain, surfaced when she read the strange message. What had Doctor Smith said about the aliens hiding amongst humans – ah!

'What kind of horse isn't a horse?' she croaked, giving them a few seconds to chew on that.

'Clothes horse?' guessed Ace.

'Sore throat?' tried Terry.

'Trojan horse,' she replied, feeling a smile contort her face despite her condition and the state of Arc One.

'Yeah!' remembered Ace. 'What we first encountered – the Trojan asteroids.' She hastily described the arrival of the Tardis in orbit and detecting both the orbital environments and what the Doctor described as "builder's rubble" collected in orbit around Earth.

Emilia stared at her, starting to feel what might be fear or excitement bubbling in her stomach. She sat up, sweat dripping off her chin and into the hollow of her neck, and grasped her Tab.

'Schottsky? This is Emilia. Get your introspective carcass up here to my room, right this instant!'

She winked at them. 'That's the only way to get his attention!'

Emil Schottsky, chief of the astronomy staff aboard Arc One, was as small and active as a weasel, unable to sit still for a second and constantly peering at his watch. Ace looked at him with amusement, wondering how he managed to keep his eye to a telescope for more than a second at a time.

'Emilia, there is a general broadcast on varying frequencies blocking communications between the Americans Downstairs and both Washington and California.' he began the instant he entered her rooms. 'I've been signalling with them via the laser.'

'Yes, yes,' she grumbled, stifling a cough. 'Never mind that - ' which made his expression change from annoyed to surprised. 'What effect would dropping one of the Trojans into the Pacific have?'

He swallowed nervily.

'Ah – one of the Lagrange objects – into the Pacific? Oh, my -'

'No! Not the Pacific – the Great Australian Bight!' interrupted Terry. 'Don't you get it – "a right mouthful" means the Bight.'

The astronomer looked thoughtful, clearly weighing up calculations mentally before speaking.

'Hmm. It wouldn't be a "planet-buster", as I believe the slang used to be. Far too small; the Trojans aren't large objects in terms of tonnage. Still, it would impact on local hydrography and _severely _affect regional weather. Why? Ah – it's impact would create a column of superheated steam and water several miles high, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of water, and prevailing winds would probably carry a lot of that inland. If it struck in relatively shallow water you might also get a small version of a tsunami that would inundate the shoreline. All in all a very violent event. Now, Emilia, why on Earth – ah, so to speak – would we want to carry out such a dangerous operation?'

Emilia looked at Ace, who returned the gaze with cool assurance. Cool on the outside; inside she could only guess why the Doctor had been so insistent on creating a miniature armageddon.

'Our friend Downstairs has requested an airstrike from the heavens,' croaked the vet, sipping at her bottle of water. 'Presumably against the same aliens who are now jamming broadcasts from Downstairs.'

Sschottsky's eyes widened to comic effect before readjusting.

'No, no, he said these hypothetical creatures live in the Outback, not in the sea.'

'Maybe they don't like rain?' suggested Terry, half-joking. 'Or they'd have camped out in England, eh, Ace?'

No answer from the astronomer, who had produced a weary electronic calculator and was tapping away on the keys. Silence reigned for minutes before he looked up again.

'It can be done. Using solid fuel boosters from our special supply, we can de-orbit an object of up to about thirty thousand tonnes. The eventual impact at sea level would be of the order of fifty megatonnes.'

Terry looked impressed. Ace looked unconvinced. Her astronomical training about satellites had been strictly off-the-cuff, picked up from the Doctor when he bothered to fill her in with details of orbits, mass, inertia, atmospheres, re-entry ionisation, angle of descent and other arcana. She still felt that Schottsky had been far too blasé about the prospect of moving anything that massive out of orbit.

'You make it sound easy!' she scoffed. The astronomer bristled with professional ardour.

'Anything but! The greater the mass, the more energy needed to alter it's orbit, and beyond a critical mass you'll get an excessive fireball and blast wave that could cause extensive damage radiating out from the impact crater. The greater the mass, the more chance of it hitting the water intact and causing earth tremors that would cause buildings to collapse. Timing rocket's firing will be critical or we'll miss the Bight and maybe hit land, which – well, imagine it yourself. Easy? Pah!'

Emilia, soothing her aching throat with a spoonful of glycerine (no honey aboard a sphere with no bees), knew there were bigger problems than that.

'Liam, we're critically short of staff who can operate the Lunar Lander. _If_ we can operate it. Nobody's even been inside it for months and months, maybe a year. We need to run a full systems check, go over the fuel capacity, do a short test flight – what is it, Ace?'

The young woman had been shaking her head.

'Mizz Branson, I don't think we can't delay very long. If the Doctor warned us to do this rock-chucking, we need to do it soon because he doesn't make suggestions like that lightly. ' Feeling cheeky at being so insistent, she impulsively added more. 'I'm EVA-qualified and I volunteer to go along.'

A high-pitched beeping that ended with an insistent squawk came from Emilia's Tab. When she replied, a nervous technician replied.

'Yes? What is it?'

'Ah, Mizz Branson, there's an event taking place Downstairs you need to see. Really, I know you're ill, but you really should see this.'

When they arrived in the Communications block, the anxious technician in residence had blown up the image from one screen onto four arranged in a square. The Australian coastline was clearly visible, and the hinterland behind it, dotted and shaded with brush and trees. A thin white line marked the division between surf and beaches, and out beyond that, perhaps half a kilometre from shore, a mass of broken breakers showed where a fleet of marine transport moved away.

'What are they doing?' mused Ace. 'It looks like an exodus.'

'It seems as if New Eucla is evacuating,' said Emilia. 'At a guess, so that our rather massy present doesn't kill lots of people.' She looked back at Ace, realising the young woman had been right: Pangolin needed to take flight urgently.

'They'll need to move at least a hundred kilometres along the coast,' commented Schottsky, who had kept up the rear of the party. 'And so will the other coastal townships.' He cast a calculating eye on Ace. 'I hope your Doctor friend is aware just how much devastation an impact from orbit will have. Personally, I don't believe that everyone in the affected coastal zone will have time to get away.'

He was wrong, as the video feeds showed only hours later: the departing armada from New Eucla only made it's way to Barralonga, ten kilometres further east along the coast. The ships put in, dropped off their passengers and made their way back to Eucla. Those who debarked began to make their way along the Eyre highway, heading eastwards and inland, having passed on the warning to the citizens of Barralonga, and the whole process began again.

Emilia, wheezing painfully and with her eyes nearly closed, summoned a hasty meeting at Lichfield, with those scions of the Founders who were available, plus Schottsky, a couple of mechanics from Edinburgh and Terry and Ace. Her presentation was short and simple: could they manage to pilot the Pangolin Lunar Lander from it's dock on the exterior of Arcology One, reach the Trojans and cause one of those objects to hit the Gulf Of Carpentaria?

'Who can pilot it?' asked the gruff engineer from Edinburgh township. 'Not me. From what I hear, the people who last flew it are all suffering from this – this fever,' he hastily amended as Barclay came into the brightly-lit meeting area with all the grace of a rabid stoat. He crossed over to Emilia and whispered in her ear, making her bow her head before recovering.

'Ah – thank you, thank you. Your thoughts, anyone?'

'I am thoroughly against it,' said Schottsky, crossing his arms and daring anyone to contradict him.

'Why not drop this bloody great rock right on top of these alien scrotes?' asked Terry, bluntly. 'Never mind the ocean, drop it right on their evil alien heads.' He glared at Schottsky. 'It gets my vote, this Lunar car, if it means revenge for those folks who got killed at Forrest.'

Barclay dropped himself down onto a chair so hard that it creaked and a leg split.

'I'm pilot-qualified on the Pangolin. I'll fly the damn thing,' he grated. The others looked at him and he looked back, defensively.

'First to be infected, first to recover. I'm fit enough to be a pilot again, and I flew Pangolin second to last time we used it.'

'_If_ we send it,' countered Schottsky. 'After all - '

'Look!' interrupted Ace. 'The Doctor has got everyone along the coastline moving away from danger. His reasons – he'd have told us if the aliens weren't jamming you. Whatever his reasons, it must be important to get tens of thousands of people moving, and they wouldn't move if it wasn't important, would they!'

The astronomer pushed his glasses back up his nose.

'Tautology. That's a circular argument.'

'It's also a very dangerous idea,' added the second engineer from Edinburgh.

Silent so far, an ailing Christos Abramovitch fiddled with his Tab. He could see one reason for using an orbiting rock to make a big hole in the ocean – it wasn't an artificial missile. He took the existence of these un-named aliens as a fact, given the evidence that had accumulated so far, and these infiltrators wouldn't know for certain that a giant rock had been deliberately aimed at them thanks to human intervention. They might suspect, but they wouldn't have proof.

'Anything that wrong-foots these genocidal monsters is a good thing. We still haven't successfully landed anyone Downstairs from this sphere and until we deal with our hidden enemy we never will. I say we go, as soon as possible.'

'Me too,' added Emilia. 'We can't put this to a vote, half the crew are either sick or looking after the sick.' She looked at Barclay. 'Ready to go?'

He looked fierce before surrendering to a hacking cough.

'Our first flight will have to be the test one if we're in a hurry. I'm ready to go.'

'Ace?'

'You betcha!' she said, making an elaborate salute.

Two other volunteers were needed as crew for the Lunar Lander. Terry put himself forward, to instant rejection. Ace had considerable experience aboard spacecraft where he had none at all; she was EVA qualified and he didn't even know what the acronym meant. A stocky German crewmember and a Welsh girl who didn't look old enough to drink legally were the other two found at short notice. They were the most recent graduates of the sphere's simulator suite, now that the original pilot, co-pilot, engineer, assistant engineer, communications officer and prosthesis specialist for the shuttle were dead, too old or too ill to fly. Four crew would suffice, since the trip would be short and didn't involve landing on a planetary surface. Ace could be the prosthesis specialist, whilst Barclay took the role of pilot and Kurt became co-pilot. Mona sulked at not being a pilot, feeling that communications came a poor third.

All four were seen off at the south polar airlock by Davy, who looked haggard, and a small group of well-wishers. Ace used the "B15" spacesuit allocated to her by the fitting booth for her earlier EVA, then stood and fretted at the delay in her crewmates being fitted-out. Davy and Barclay stood off to one side, out of earshot, and muttered conspiratorially. Terry caught up with her and passed over a bundle of spun metal net, just in case.

Once out of the airlock, she took a long breath and slowly craned her neck upwards to look at the incredible and unbounded heavens swirling above. Automatically, and without needing to be told, she anchored herself to the hull with a magnetic grapple.

Hercules! she said to herself, recognising the constellation by the three stars in the sword. And the Moon, incredibly sharply detailed in sunlight, looking as alien as any strange planet she'd ever set foot upon. That was Mare Nostrum – and the sphere's motion eventually took the Earth's satellite out of her view, bringing the bright blue planet itself into her perspective. Her visor dimmed automatically to bring down the level of sunlight, as it threw a bleak and shifting array of shadows across the outer hull.

'Are we all oriented?' asked Kurt over the common radio link. Like the other three arcology citizens, he kept his head low to avoid the vista that Ace was revelling in. She detected a wobble in his voice; poor fella hadn't been out on the hull recently like she had, he was bound to be a bit wobbly. His metal clutch sack of solid-fuel boosters wobbled, too. She eyed them warily. They were a metre in length, as thick around as her thigh, and designed to impart braking or deceleration to the sphere for descent to a lower orbit. Once ignited they couldn't be stopped and since they were designed to operate on a vessel of fifteen thousand tonnes, were easily powerful enough to render Pangolin into a cloud of tin-foil should an accident happen.

Again the feeling of being on a giant fairground ride came back to Ace, with a touch of exuberance. Her fear and anxiety were firmly quashed on this venture out onto the hull, now that she had the knack of sliding her magnetic boots along the surface from tether point to tether point. In fact she had to hang back to allow the other three to lead her across the hull, following occasional big green arrows painted or etched onto the plates. With the air of urgency about the whole job, she wanted to be under way immediately, or sooner.

The Lunar Lander's "dock" was less impressive in the metal than the imagination. A simple four-sided metal box, open at the top, with a doorway cut into it, all being welded to the hull. Barclay plodded around all four walls to inspect for micro-meteorite damage, declaring the whole structure free from any problems.

'Hello Pangolin,' he muttered into the link when they entered the dock.

Oh! was Ace's reaction. Her expectation of a giant streamlined missile vanished at the sight of the thirty foot height of the Lunar Lander, all struts and giant bulbous fuel and lox tanks. Atop the skeleton frame sat an angular box, studded with aerials and verniers, looking like a metallic octopus with it's big blank windows and dangling extensor arms. Barclay indicated a set of rungs welded to one leg, rungs that ran up to the box.

'The way up. First, we check the tanks for any punctures or leaks.'

'Hurry up,' grumbled Mona, checking her wrist-mounted control panel. 'We've got two and a half hours air left.'

'And fifty in the crew compartment, darling,' said Kurt. 'No, don't go up yet. More efficient if we all go in one after the other.'

He and Barclay turned on their helmet lights and carried out a short inspection. The Warden pointed to frost scaled around piping, at which Kurt shrugged.

'Pangolin is in permanent shadow. Once we leave the hull sunlight will act on the pipes and defrost them.' He secured the fuel rods in a service container to protect them from potential impacts and any flames directed from the craft's manouevering verniers.

After that Barclay led them up the rungs to the crew compartment, which Ace immediately translated into "cabin". The airlock could only cycle two at a time, so they used up another ten minutes getting into the cabin. The cold, dark, forbidding cabin, where only a scattering of tiny red lights showed that anything still worked.

'NO!' shouted Ace over the link, her voice so loud that the speaker fuzzed and buzzed. Kurt jerked in alarm in the confined space, nearly bumping into Barclay.

'What the hell is it!' snarled the Warden. 'My head's still banging and I don't need - '

'Mona was about to crack the seal on her helmet,' explained Ace. The benefits of recent experience!

'Damn! Mona, don't make stupid mistakes like that. You could freeze-burn your eyes or your windpipe.'

When Barclay turned the Master Arming Switch the Pangolin's systems came slowly back to life, like an arthritic old man waking up in wintertime, made sluggish by long enduring a lonely and icy isolation. Banks of instruments, dials, meters and monitors came on, illuminating the cramped cabin. After ten minutes the newly-present air had reached merely freezing instead of near-lethal and they could crack their suit seals, talking to each other instead of using the link.

'Suits on at all times,' pontificated Kurt. This restricted mobility and free space, since the suits life-support packs incorporated a short-range jet unit for limited manouevering. Ace strapped herself into a battered seat that had "PRSTHS" stencilled onto it, feeling like a Weeble perched on an egg-cup thanks to the suit's reinforced hip joints. She looked over the controls laid out before her: two joysticks surrounded by graduated half-rings marked in degrees, labelled buttons and switches, a large monitor overhead showing the blank metal walls of the dock, and two smaller, blank, screens. Probably one for each extensor arm, she reasoned.

'Those haven't been used since the last days of putting up the Lunar Mine,' warned Barclay. 'Be gentle and careful with them.' His breath caught in his throat and he coughed loudly, swearing afterwards. 'Damn this air, it's like breathing liquid ice!'

Kurt methodically went down a list of instructions about booting up, warming up and powering up different Lander functions. Soft tremors shook the cabin as fuel and oxiders began to mix and burn.

'Electromagnet clamps to off,' sang out Barclay. He clacked a set of big, stiff switches and the dock walls began to slide past Ace's monitor, at first inching and then accelerating suddenly to bring the Lander out into sunlight. The sphere gradually took shape beneath them as distance gave them a perspective, becoming a giant mis-shapen football with the drum-like fusion plant at one end and miniature vacuum factories at the other.

Barclay ran a series of short bursts on all the verniers, finding a couple that mis-fired or refused to work altogether. Kurt inspected all the electronic equipment, also finding a few instruments that no longer functioned thanks to long neglect and ultra-low temperatures. Mona found that the radio-jamming also affected her radio link to the sphere.

All this passed Ace by. She was busy with the extensor arms. First she hauled the joysticks back towards her, which brought the arms up horizontally, then experimented with moving the joysticks to one side, then the other. Rotating them caused the extensor's clamps to twist in a circular motion around their own axis; pressing the green stud atop each joystick caused the clamps to close, releasing caused them to stay locked in that position, and pressing the red stud released them back to rest. Pushing down on the joystick telescoped the arms into their own length, reversed by pulling the joysticks upwards. She did all this slowly and carefully, mindful of Barclay's warning. Knowing from eavesdropping on the Doctor that lubrication in a space-craft like this would be with a granular microsphere compound instead of a liquid, she looked at each arm's monitor screen to try and detect any traces of compressed or clotted material.

'You're pretty handy with those,' complimented Kurt. 'I always bang one into the other.'

'Years of practice,' smarmed Ace, referring to her years of playing computer games with a joystick and definitely not manning spacecraft. But what Kurt didn't know didn't harm him.

For several minutes Barclay put Pangolin into a series of small, delicately adjusted manouevres designed to kill the ship's forward motion and align it on a trajectory for the Lagrange point that shepherded the Trojan asteroids. The absence of some verniers meant having to make adjustments with others that complicated the task, even with computer-controlled assistance. He grew in confidence with each passing minute – confidence that came to have a critical consequence within minutes.

'Okay. Get ready for acceleration,' he warned them, sighing with relief at having managed the fine attitude corrections.

A dull noise, a subdued growl, permeated the cabin as the main reaction motor fired up and began to accelerate them into a different orbit, slowly pressing them all back into their seats and making Ace feel as if she weighed twenty stone.

Hells bells! she swore to herself. This must be what happens if you eat all day long. Now I know what I'll feel like on my fortieth birthday. The diet starts tomorrow!

Cheerful pinging sounds came as the motor cut out for the present. The three arcology crew looked and felt unhappy as the microgravity environment began to affect their sense of balance and poise; Ace revelled as her invisible body mass vanished, utterly unconcerned with the lack of gravity.

'Captain Barclay – I can't use the radio,' said Mona. 'That jamming is across all frequencies and blocks everything.' She rubbed an ear in the aftermath of the high-pitched squealing sent into her headphones.

'Oh great! So we're completely cut off from Arc One?'

She smiled ruefully.

'Not quite. I can still use the signaling laser to send Morse back. However, only the astronomy people will be able to detect it, and then only for five minutes out of every ten when the sphere's rotation brings them back into direct view.'

The chief pilot wiped his brow with the back of a suit gauntlet, frowning. Problems with manouvering, and instrumentation, and now they couldn't rely on being in touch with Arc One for additional support. Thankfully the computers that calculated trajectory, acceleration, orientation and endurance were still fully operational but he would have liked to have the option of a back-up contact from the astronomers back on the sphere. His piloting was old and rusty; Kurt would be a very welcome aide in working out the mathematics and practicalities of deceleration.

'Okay. Broadcast back to the sphere, let them know we're on our way, ETA six hours.'

Mona hunched over her console, screwing her face up to make out a message in Morse code. She then had to call on Ace to deftly work the tracking ball that directed Pangolin's low-powered laser towards Arc One – another skill aqcuired thanks to years of compter arcade games.

The chief pilot looked over banks of guages and meters. If they matched velocity successfully with the Trojans, they needed to keep a wary eye open for smaller objects travelling at high speed relative to the debris field. The mass of their inbound missile needed to be within fairly strict parameters as calculated by the astronomy staff: too small and it would merely explode in the upper atmosphere without any effect apart from a loud noise; too large and it would cause earth tremors guaranteed to destroy the coastal communities, not to mention a gigantic fireball and radioactive fallout.

Once they got there, the real fun would begin. Ace needed to drill into the chosen rock at a precise angle to a precise depth in order to place the solid fuel rockets correctly, and the rockets needed to be ignited at the correct time to drop the rock into the Great Australian Bight, not on the coast or into deeper waters. Schottsky and his colleagues had given him whole pages of calculations that took different factors into account but which still couldn't predict everything.

Time ticked slowly away. Temperatures inside the spacecraft increased to become slightly clammy, forcing a small dehumidifier to come into operation. Condensation still speckled the big external windows, blurring the view.

At three hours into the mission, he incautiously fired a set of verniers at full displacement without gradually increasing their thrust (as he had done hours before) to invert Pangolin and allow the main motor to begin deceleration.

A violent and shuddering _bang!_ assaulted their popping ears, followed by a thin, high-pitched shriek. Condensation on the windows vanished, their breath became visible, loose fittings began to rattle.

'Helmets! Suit up!' barked Kurt. A rank of tell-tales were blinking red on an overhead panel. Ace heard the nasty whistling sound stop as she buckled her helmet on again before activating the radio link.

'Were we hit?' gasped Mona. 'A meteor?'

'No,' drawled Barclay slowly, scanning a set of figures and text scrolling across a ticker-tape screen. His stomach sank. 'A fuel pipe to a manouevering vernier blew out.' He hammered on a big red emergency button to stop the fuel pump.

Overhead the rank of tell-tales went to orange.

'Self-sealing is working, anyway, muttered Kurt. 'What have we lost?'

'Tanked oxygen. Manouevring fuel reserve. All the cabin air.'

The cabin air came back, slowly, and stayed very cold. Barclay hit his thighs with his gauntlets and set to calculating what percentage of resources remained, arriving at some uncomfortable numbers.

'Cabin is sealed again,' buzzed Kurt into the radio link and looking at green tell-tales.

The chief pilot looked at the figures on his Tab. They were sealed again, good. Less good was the shortage of air. Briefly put, they only had four hours of air left in the cabin and in the tanked oxygen for a journey that would last nine hours and an undetermined time at their destination in the Trojans. Enough maneuvering fuel left to manage three hundred seconds of vectoring, which meant either being able to re-orient Pangolin when they reached the Trojans or when they returned to Arc One; they didn't have enough fuel to do both. Not being able to change course meant a much longer stop-over, reducing their already non-existent reserve of oxygen.

'Good,' he replied, blandly. 'Let's get on with this mission.'

There was a way out of their mess, if it came to that. Of course, it meant one of them would die.


	19. Chapter 20

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Running Wild

It hadn't been easy to persuade Mike, Lenny and half a dozen of New Eucla's more senior and responsible citizens that the whole town needed to be evacuated without delay. They could, and did, send a pair of couriers east and west on the Eyre Highway to pass on news about the Lithoi infiltrators, their human-shaped transport and their human dupes.

Their meeting was held on the floor of the main town hall, where a continuous parade of curious citizens came to gawp in wonder at the gutted maquette of Old Ben the Wanderer, laid out on the stage with a protective guard to make sure nobody touched the mangled thing.

'Please! You are all in very great danger!' the Doctor expounded, again, emphasising his actions with an umbrella wave.

'I don't doubt it,' muttered Mike. 'I went to help at Forrest. I know what these things can do.'

'Why ain't they here already?' asked Lenny, shrewdly.

The Doctor shrugged.

'I don't know. We ought to make the most of this grace period, really. And it isn't just the Lithoi who pose a threat. I mentioned my "flyswatter" and if it works the town ought to be evacuated outright.'

'You still haven't explained what you mean by that,' commented one of the elders. 'Swatting flies.'

'Oh, you'll know when it happens. Now – ah!' exclaimed the Time Lord as an analogy struck him. 'I take it you still play sports here in South Australia - football?' a rhetorical question, since he'd seen the pitches when riding out to Forrest.

That earned him a few puzzled stares.

'American, soccer and Australian rules,' said Lenny proudly.

'You don't let spectators onto the pitch, do you – no, of course not. That's what I want here – a few volunteers to help keep the Lithoi busy when they turn up and prevent them from following the evacuees. Every one else will be gone, sailed away, so we have a clear playing field.'

This slightly strained explanation finally got the townsfolk moving. The Timelord felt a little wry amusement at his own expense, taking so long to come up with a persuasive way of putting across the danger New Eucla was in when Ace would have managed it with sheer ingenuousness and sincerity within thirty seconds.

A procession of disgruntled citizens plodded down the hard-worn streets and main road of their township, heading towards the sound of breakers and the waiting ships beyond, already out at anchor in the bay. Many clutched possessions, odd things that were small enough to carry or too precious to risk leaving behind.

Once they reached the beach, small rowboats ferried people out to the waiting ships, able to take four hundred passengers in total.

Mike watched them leave, wondering if they'd have a town to come back to when all this was over – however long "all this" would be, and feeling the ghost of a smell in his nostrils, the bitter charnel stink of a murdered hamlet at Forrest. When the ships cast off he walked amongst those left behind to reassure them.

'They'll be back in an hour. They're only going to drop folks off at Barralonga and then they'll be back. Me and the lads who stay behind will make sure nobody breaks into your houses or robs your kit.'

He trudged back up the clinging sands, heading for the scrub beyond the beach and high ground where that strange blue box had been. From there he could see the fleet tacking and bearing out to open waters in a combination of flapping sails and sooty smoke from the steam engines. Two dozen ships, the most he'd seen sailing at any one time, leaving a huge creamy wake in the combers that ran into the beach's sunny sands.

'I believe you mentioned a fire-engine?' came a voice at his elbow, making the new mayor jump in shock. Doctor Smith, of course, a man with the ability to make less noise than a mouse in felt slippers.

'The fire-engine? Yes, we have one. Oh – you want to put out fires these slinking lizards start?'

The little man made a rude, dismissive noise.

'Hardly! Their principal weapon appears to be a focussed thermal beam of extremly high intensity. If you spray water on a beam like that it breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen and merely fuels the fire. No, no, I had a rather less – ah, genteel – use for it.'

This puzzled Mike again. Their fire-engine constituted a half-ton water tank on a custom-built chassis, the power for pumping provided by mutually-opposed longitudinal handles on either side of the tank. Simple and reliable, it worked for the low-rise buildings of New Eucla,.

'Also, I'm looking for metal foil of any description.'

At first Mike imagined he'd misheard.

'Oil?'

'No, "foil". The kind of stuff you wrap the turkey in for Christmas dinner! And a wok,' and the little man beamed a smile that made Mike wonder who between the two of them was dafter.

Several hundred miles away to the north, buried deep beneath the Nullarbor Plain, a team of Lithoi were planning their next, highly drastic move in light of their existence being revealed.

Hours before, emergency warning lights and sirens had sounded, indicating that an undercover Transport amongst the humans had been compromised and would need emergency back-up.

In fact it had been more complicated than that: Mirkan 93 sent a radio message stating that he needed to abandon his Transport in order to implicate a human investigating the destruction of Forrest hamlet. This human had single-handedly sniffed out their existence and was threatening to breach their institutional secrecy.

Regardless of whether he succeeded in eliminating this human interloper, Mirkan 93 needed collection from a safe point well beyond the township, away from possible eyesight, eavesdropping or interception. A random spot miles into the desert was chosen, partly out of spite on the part of his seniors, who were not impressed that he had destroyed his cover, his Transport and their secrecy.

The co-ordinates had been sent and received, when another crisis landed squarely upon them: a radio message was being sent from New Eucla to one of the satellite communities in orbit!

Panic amongst the Lithoi alone would have taken thirty or forty seconds to shut off the broadcast; instead their computers predicted the best course of action and initiated a powerful jamming signal instantly. This also had the unfortunate side-effect of cutting off communication with Mirkan 93.

At this point there were no anxious feelings amongst the lizard-folk. Their flying-eyes were not designed to be crewed with live Lithoi but did have an emergency crawl-space built in over the landing gear, and Mirkan 93 would be occupying that space. Once aboard, the flying eye would proceed to New Eucla and destroy the whole township with everyone in it. As insurance, a second flying eye would go along, too.

That was the plan. A third party had their own plans, plans nobody else had even considered.

A scouting group of hunting spiders, five in number, came scuttling over the baked earth, heading southwards to the sea like a set of severed hairy hands. This would have taken them into the territory of New Eucla and under normal circumstances the voracious creatures would have kept clear. Lately, however, prey had failed to come into their hunting grounds in sufficient number and sheer hunger was driving the spider packs into larger sweeps over greater areas of ground. Lacking any intelligence, they didn't realise that most of this absence was due to the wandering herds of camel and kangaroo learning to keep away from a certain ill-defined zone (those herd members too stupid to learn ended up as high-grade ashy fertiliser on the Nullarbor Plain). Ironically these scouts were themselves being scouted, and the unseen scouts were far deadlier than any scavenging arachnids. They proved this by witnessing the Lithoi's slow escape and creating a plan.

One of the causes of that animal migration, Mirkan 93, currently laboured slowly and carefully alongside the rutted camber of the track out of the township, where it's long, narrow body could fit without any difficulty. An observer able to look down from the vantage height of a horse would have witnessed what seemed to be a snake of unusual girth for it's length, a snake with glittering metallic collars and braces and belts, a dark leathery snake with odd little limbs sprouting at three points along it's belly. That same observer would have been dead in seconds thanks to the lasing rods that protruded from the free-floating weapons collar mounted on the "snake".

Mirkan 93 needed to set his computer's self-defence setting at Level 1 (which the Doctor might have characterised as "paranoid trigger-happiness") because he didn't have any protective armour thanks to needing to fit snugly into his Transport. A startled rat and a dozy toad had already been lasered into charcoaled remnants by the escaping Lithoi, who now found a conflict between the power expended in protecting his ever-so-vulnerable skin and the finite energy in his pocket battery.

The hunting spiders were known to the Lithoi at their central base, but little-feared. After all, what good were primitive fangs when pitted against a woven sapphire monomesh suit? And the Lithoi had fangs of their own, quite capable of rending and tearing if need be, although the most use they got was at the dining suite.

However, pondered Mirkan 93 as he crawled intently up the drainage channel. Being safely suited and being exposed to the elements were completely different. He cringed a little in fear. Literally exposed to the elements! That dreadful precipitation of water that struck the coast periodically might erupt at any second –

- and he slowly raised his torso upwards to look directly overhead and check for rainclouds. This surprised the five hunting spiders; they hadn't detected the smell of anything recognisably edible on the wind. Still, their rudimentary eyes told them that the thing in the ditch was moving, that it emitted heat and four of them gamely squared up to the long, leathery creature.

Three of them abruptly exploded into gouts of hair, chitin and sloppy innards, burst by the lasers that Mirkan's computer directed at them before his sluggish mind managed to grasp that they were a threat. The two remaining spiders danced away into dry weeds alongside the road to be seen no more. Mirkan 93's computer tracked them as they went, then determined that they were no longer a threat, directing the sensor net forward again, all in the time it took the Lithoi to swivel his head to follow the spiders retreat.

Slowly, achingly so by the standards of terrestrial life, the alien creature lowered itself down into the ditch again, and began to crawl intently forward. It's average speed was less than a mile per hour. Mirkan 93calculated he would take five hours to reach the flying eye rendezvous, a time that gradually wound down to four hours. By then the ditch and road were no more than a beaten path barely discernible from the rolling countryside and he could move a little faster at the cost of being more visible.

Out of nowhere, a strange itching sensation ran across his nethers. He rolled to one side to remove the irritating feeling – and hissed in pain when a searing dart pricked his soft skin. Tensing like a cable, Mirkan 93 slowly turned his head, suffering more invisible arrows of pain.

To The Above! he hissed into the air. Six-legged insects swarmed across the track and several had crawled onto him, where they began to bite with a blind ferocity. His computer-controlled lasers didn't fire thanks to the safety cut-out or he'd have fried himself. He rolled over as speedily as a Lithoi could, crushing the insects, only for more to come racing across the track towards him. He clumsily began to crawl away at an angle, seeking to put distance between him and the – toxic ants. That's what they were; dangerous in numbers if they managed to swamp a victim.

Driven by panic, he barely managed to outpace the eyeless questing insects and desperately resorted to flaying them with laser bolts. This ran down his pocket battery. One insolent insect managed to reach his belly and gave him the most painful bite of all. That one he despatched with his own fangs – regretting the act instantly since toxic ants tasted vile.

This unpleasant diversion forced him away from the direct route to the flying-eye pickup point. He didn't dare venture back to the track in case the ants were still following.

Thirty minutes later he encountered more toxic ants, and yes, they were following the track. He veered off again, to the west. This time he kept clear of the ants, but again had to keep far from his most efficient route.

The radio was no use. When he tried a squalling storm of static threatened to shatter his eardrums. Jamming by the Baseship – to what end? he wondered.

Impossibly, more giant ferocious ants began to appear from his right. At first they only came in ones and twos, running in circles without any apparent aim. Within minutes the singles and pairs became tens and dozens. Now beginning to feel alarmed, Mirkan 93 veered away from them, and discovered more ants not ten metres away to his left. In a fit of rage he blasted whole square metres of ground into smoldering blackness, dotted with tiny charred spots where the ants died in hundreds.

And came on in their hundreds.

Giving up on trying to destroy them and with his pocket battery down to near empty, Mirkan 93 slithered on at a killing pace, all of two miles per hour. He tried the radio again – still jammed. And what was that ahead? A writhing mass of hair – no, a mass of the ants, clustered on top of an object completely obscured by their bodies. When he closed on it the hidden thing turned out to be a stinking piece of carrion, dragged there by some outback animal.

_Danger! Free-standing water!_ chirped his computer, indicating straight ahead. The ground sloped down beyond that rotting piece of meat, probably into a running collection of water that the indigenes called a "river". Mirkan 93 looked around uneasily, feeling that he'd been forced into a bottleneck. He carefully edged forward, intending to crawl along the ant-free ground beyond that meat -

The ground gave way beneath him in a cloud of dust and stones, gravity pitching him forward and downward, into a pool of shallow muddy water, cool and gritty underneath the riverbank. Mirkan 93 screamed in mortal fear, inhaled ounces of water and began to haemorrhage internally whilst blistering and peeling externally. His death-throes were strangely slow, more a gentle quivering than an expected thrashing, and the last thing he saw was the ambush group of dingoes that had dug away the riverbank underfoot to drop him into water. One of them retrieved the piece of carrion they had used as bait to attract the toxic ants, once they had damaged their nests and provoked a predictable enraged response. Slowly chewing, the dingo looked on the dying Not-Good with satisfaction. A dead Not-Good with no dingo suffering as much as a singed whisker. The pack exchanged satisfied barks and growls.

Two miles distant, invisible to anyone bar those able to see into the far ultra-violet, the Lithoi's two spare flying eyes stood on the ground east of Forrest, waiting for the escapee to arrive.

Staying behind and acting as a rearguard in New Eucla would be dangerous. The six volunteers knew this before being warned by Doctor Smith about what they faced: a flying craft that mounted very high-powered infra-red beam weapons, able to destroy the whole township in minutes.

Since the township had been emptied of people, the aliens might very well choose to pursue them, either across the ocean or once they reached land, and there would be an unholy slaughter if that happened.

'Your job is to buy time,' explained the Timelord, sipping a lemonade outside The Sanctuary, having helped himself to a jugful in the larder.

'And die trying?' growled Brogan, a leathery brown livestock farmer cradling a shotgun.

'No. Please try not to get killed,' replied the Doctor, managing to sound flippant whilst looking with a deadly intensity at Brogan, who could only hold the gaze for a second before flinching. 'I said buy time, not die in a gloriously useless fashion.'

Mike kept his own counsel. The little man had liberated a set of kitchen knives and then dug out a battered aluminium wok from The Sanctuary's darkest kitchen recesses with an expression of genuine glee, only bettered when he discovered a few gold coins in the building's safe. Somehow he'd opened the safe with what looked like a child's toy, except no child's toy created a vibration that rattled ones teeth and bowels simultaneously. Then he'd dragged Billy Barakan off to the forge with both wok and coins to work mischief with both. Billy came back ten minutes later with the nozzle for their fire-engine's hose, treated in the furnace until it turned cherry red and then worked with hammer and file. It still plugged back into the hose.

'Gives you more range,' was the only explanation they got.

And all the time, every few minutes, the small stranger looked to the skies over the Bight. He wouldn't explain his preoccupation to anyone.

'Late,' he muttered within earshot of Mike after finishing off the lemonade.

Glynn, another weather-beaten outsider more used to long, lonely days riding the highway as a courier, wanted an explanation as to why they'd dragged the fire-engine into mid-street and left it there, concealed by no more than a tarpaulin.

'Let me guess,' interrupted Mike. 'These things hate water. So they'll run a mile if they get hosed.'

'Broadly correct,' beamed the Doctor, rattling lemon slices together at the bottom of his empty jug. Again, his attention wandered to the south.

'You expecting them Starmen to come to the rescue?' asked Denny. He was Lenny's younger brother, and just as acidly observant as the elder man, who had reluctantly been sent off with the refugees. 'Huh! As if! They never bothered before, did they?'

For a long pause the five citizens discussed how the Starmen had never helped anyone on Earth before in an argument that went around in a circle.

When the bickering had wound down, Mike started to direct them to different points of the deserted township. The Doctor had indicated that they needed to stay under cover wherever possible and that, whilst they weren't and couldn't be exactly safe, they stood a far better chance of surviving than the unfortunate citizens of Forrest for reasons of –

'What the hell is _that_!' interrupted Glynn, pointing over Mike's shoulder to the skies beyond the shore. Everyone turned to look at a blazing fireball bigger than the Moon, an incendiary apparition that spat and shed violent streamers in it's wake, leaving a trail of smoke leading back into the heavens. A dull booming came distantly to them, echoing in between the silent streets of the empty town.

'It's going to hit the beach,' stuttered Denny, stumbling backwards.

'Citizens of New Eucla, meet my flyswatter,' announced the Doctor with a combination of pride and vengeance, resting his fingertips against each other. 'Don't worry, it's going to hit well out in the Bight. You can't judge distances very well by just looking, Denny.' He added a stage-whispered coda. 'Thank you Starmen.'

The flaming missile took forever to fall to a point where the trees and hillocks along the beach hid it from sight, which made Mike realise that the thing really was far off, fifty kilometres at least. Ages later a giant muddy grey mushroom cloud humped up into the sky, towering up and up and up until weather patterns began to tear and shred it apart. Seconds later they heard and felt a shockwave that vibrated in the very earth itself, making buildings rattle, chimney's fall down and window panes unseat. Amidst the tinkle of breaking glass the townsfolk looked in wonder and awe at each other.

'What – Doctor, what was that!' gasped Mike. 'A meteor?'

'One of the Trojan asteroids, dislodged from orbit by the Starmen. I gave them the approximate co-ordinates to hit so the tsunami generated won't destroy your townships along the coast. Expect big waves very soon.'

The group stood in awestruck silence for minutes before Glynn cocked an eye at the cloudless blue sky over New Eucla and the giant plume of water to the south that had begun to lose cohesion and disperse into the heavens.

'The wind's going to carry all that water inland, hey? So these alien Lithy-things get wet.'

A silent nod came from the Doctor as confirmation, before he realised another warning was due.

'The blast wave will arrive before the rain, and it's going to hit hard. Best get to open ground and lie down.'

Within minutes a blinding sleet of warm rain, carried horizontally by a furious gale, buffeted the township. Windows could be heard breaking and other structures collapsing under this brief but vicious weather assault that suddenly vanished as quickly as it arrived. The seven men got up from a nearby cattle-pen, drenched and tousled yet unharmed.

'Better get spread out,' warned Mike. He looked at the small stranger with respect. Rain and waves together out of nowhere. Perhaps they might be able to tackle the water-hating aliens successfully. Even the cynical and dismissive Denny had stopped being so pessimistic.

The six men split up to hide amongst deserted houses and buildings. The Doctor co-opted Billy and ducked under the tarpaulin concealing the fire-engine. There he set to locating the valves that ensured a flow of water to the hose before gently teasing them with his sonic screwdriver, coming to a conclusion with a satisfied grunt and pulling down the side-bar that generated pressure within the water tank. He cranked this up and down for whole minutes, Billy not understanding why – the pressure would fall off once those handles were let loose again, surely.

'I know what you're thinking,' said the stranger, taking the words right out of the young man's mouth. 'But I've swollen the seals to prevent pressure leaking away.'

A low rushing sound penetrated the dank, smelly fabric covering.

'Oh dear! The wave arrived early – come on Billy, out, out.' The little man shooed them both outside, pausing to stab the tarpaulin's corners into the roadway with his stolen kitchen knives, then dragged Billy to the north side of the nearest building. Already clouds were arriving overhead, dark and ominous and driven by winds from the sea, and that rushing –

Billy got to see a tumbling wall of water sweep over the hillock's beyond the town, a brownish-grey flood that raced onwards towards them. It didn't seem very high or dangerous until he witnessed branches and rubble being swept along in the murky tide, and it didn't slow down appreciably until it hit the town outskirts, hitting and sweeping aside trees and bushes and small dunes until it smashed up against them. He glanced at his odd companion, who smiled blandly, nodding. Not bothered at all – either they were safe where they were or Doctor Smith had scrambled egg for brains.

Andthenthewavearrived, washing past either side of them on the roadway in a sudden gush full of dangerous debris, sweeping around the corners of their protective house up to their ankles. Billy had expected a surging torrent able to knock him off his feet, and instead his tyre-sandals got sodden and filled with dirty sand.

'These houses disperse the wave,' explained the Doctor. 'Like a breakwater. Ah, splendid!'

Billy didn't realise what the fuss was about; then again, he felt as if Doctor Smith had half-a-dozen plans on the go all at once and didn't bother to tell anyone what they were. He bent to untie a sandal lace, and a restraining tug on his arm from the Doctor's daft umbrella handle stopped him.

'Keep your shoes on. You don't know what that tsunami dredged up from the bottom.'

The umbrella handle tugged him back into the road where the waters were now pooling and settling, leaving lumps of flotsam in ragged heaps. The biggest ragged heap turned out to be the fire-engine. It's tarpaulin cover protected the engine from being clogged by the wave and was now covered in mud, sand, twigs and branches of varying size – and a dead fish. Habit and ingrained practice almost made Billy pick up the fish to put aside as food.

_Bang!_ and he jumped, ducking down behind the fire engine.

'Don't worry, only thunder,' said Doctor Smith, wetting a finger and testing wind direction. Billy looked up at the skies, now lowering with grim clouds plainly bursting with rain. 'Hmm. Instant tropical storm, I shouldn't wonder.' He looked down at Billy and grinned apologetically. 'Sorry. Making weather on the hoof like this is an art, not a science.'

Another rumble came from the south, preceded by a faint flash of lightning.

_Bang_! and this time the Doctor ducked down alongside Billy.

'That was a shotgun. The Lithoi have arrived.'


	20. Chapter 21

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Space Between

In her schooldays, Ace had occasionally participated in the "Balloon Game", where a group of people tried to come up with reasons why they, personally, ought not to be thrown from an imaginary balloon so that the others might live. She'd never imagined she'd actually be sitting in the real-life equivalent of the Balloon Game, stuck in a damaged spacecraft with insufficient air to even return to base, let alone carry out their mission.

Barclay gave them the facts without any window-dressing: they had enough air left to get to the Trojans and _maybe_ perform their mission. Then they'd die.

He let this sink in for a minute before offering an alternative. Only one person would be at risk, though he wouldn't explain until they actually got to the Lagrange point and scouted out what orbital rubble they could choose from.

After deceleration, Pangolin's radar warned them about their arrival at the Lagrange point. Ace looked out of the portholes and was disappointed that they weren't in the middle of a boulder-ridden midden in space. In fact, she couldn't see anything, the glare of earthlight prevented any object standing out. Within minutes of arriving Kurt pinpointed an irregular shape on the radar screen and Barclay nudged them to within metres by skillful and gentle use of the verniers; they all paid very close attention to his delicate use of the throttles and choke until he locked them off.

'About your alternative - ' began Kurt.

'How were we going to put that rock into a deceleration to hit off the Bight?' asked Barclay, immediately answering his own question. 'By using Pangolin's ballistics computer and plotting where to drill holes in the rock, then drilling them, then placing the fuel boosters, then rigging a remote to ignite them in sequence.'

'We don't have time,' added Mona. 'You worked it out. We don't have the air or the time.'

'Correct. So we use an alternative method, one that uses an on-board computer to make real-time alterations and adjustments to the boosters.'

Kurt shook his head.

'Dismounting the computer equipment would take hours, as would setting it up.'

Ace realised where this euphemistically-phrased alternative led.

'He's not talking about an electronic computer. He means one of us has to ride that rock down.' She looked directly at him. 'Right?'

'Correct. We need only three boosters that way. One person fewer extends the air in here by a quarter and the spare booster is going to be attached to Pangolin to accelerate you back towards Arc One. With suit air I calculate a safety margin of about twenty to thirty minutes.'

'And how do we choose who gets to go out riding a comet?' asked Ace.

'There's no choice. I go,' said Barclay, his normally pale features even paler. 'I wouldn't trust you or Mona to physically emplace or direct a solid-fuel rocket.' He looked at Kurt. 'And Kurt hasn't killed twenty three people.'

His parting chat with Davy had been an update on the infection: twenty three dead, with another dozen seriously ill to the point of being at risk of dying. He couldn't go back to face that, knowing he was the biggest killer in the sphere's history. Taking a deep breath, he hurried on.

'Ace, you need to use the arms to drill a hole to emplace a booster, dead centre of this rock's forward axis. While you do that I'll EVA with the boosters and a drill.'

Without waiting for any argument, he snapped his helmet shut and unstrapped from his seat, clumping awkwardly to the airlock and cycling to the outside, where the matt blackness sparkled with stars and moon and earthlight.

Shaking his head at what looked like a bleak poetic skyscape, he lowered himself down the leg rungs and retrieved a rock drill and the Australian lad's wire netting before opening up a service bin and bundling three boosters and his other kit into the netting. Then he opened up his suit's jets for the brief, terrifying journey from Pangolin to the giant rock, adjusting his posture to manage a creditable feet-first landing.

He waved broadly to the spacecraft, which began a slow acceleration forward using only attitude control jets. Then his attention was devoted entirely to the uneven surface of the giant rock and a scramble to reach his destination, across pits and fissures that needed leaping whilst also trying not to reach escape velocity.

Faint vibrations ran up his legs, puzzling until he realised Ace must be drilling into the rock up ahead. In fact she had finished by the time he reached a small cloud of debris drifting ahead of the parent rock, debris that surrounded a shallow crater with a deep vertical centre. Narrower than the booster, the Warden judged. He activated the radio link.

'Right. Time to use that fourth booster. Ace, you need to extract it from the service bin and clamp it physically against Pangolin with one of the arms – don't just hold it unsecured or it'll tear the arm off. Don't forget once it starts to burn you can't stop it.'

He killed the link instantly afterwards, not wanting to hear any last broadcasts. Then he set to enlarging the borehole with his drill, until the metallic lining of the booster fitted snugly inside. Peeling the three protective covers free, he unwrapped the friction igniter and pulled sharply, then headed back along the rock at speed, fast as he dared. Even so, the purple afterglare of the booster igniting danced in his vision for minutes afterwards.

Another set of tremors ran up his legs; above, relative to him, Pangolin began to move away. One of the arms had been bent back in a strange fashion, then straightened, then bent –

'Ace, waving goodbye,' he mumbled, a snort of laughter erupting from his throat. Making a cautious return journey, he found a likely resting site in an old, shallow crater and reclined against the battered rock. Judging this as good a place as any, he dropped his equipment and drilled another hole beyond the crater's lip, sufficiently wide to hold the booster's inert end, then positioned one of the metal tubes in the makeshift socket. He needed the metal netting to keep a grip on it or else risk having his hands – despite their protective gauntlets – being burnt off in seconds. Once sure that the impromptu rocket arrangement would hold, he began to input data into his Tab. There were several variables he needed to guess at; Kurt had estimated the rock as having a mass of about twenty thousand metric tonnes but this could be off by fifteen to twenty per cent without having conducted a thorough seismic survey. The upper limit they could work with would be twenty-five thousand tonnes or risk the rock being a continent-splitter when it impacted at ground zero.

He also remembered to turn his life support recycle coefficients to their lowest permissible settings, to extend his breathable air. Then he practiced long, slow breathing.

Gradually he realised there was something missing. A slow check of his surroundings brought the realisation that his personal rock spaceship no longer trembled under the braking effect of the solid fuel booster – and a slightly more startling realisation that planet Earth loomed closer, closer enough for him to be able to discern tributaries in the Amazon. Not a lot closer, not enough.

Setting his jaw, and the booster at the rough angle recommended by his Tab, Barclay pulled the ignition tab and shut his eyes. Even with his visor fully polarised and with his eyes shut a wash of light and heat came to him, the acid light more powerful than the faint increase in temperature. The net in his hands twisted and tugged like a hooked fish and withered away when the sacrificial booster burned down to it. By that time the rocket had bedded itself in the rock socket so firmly that it stayed in place and Barclay slumped into cover gratefully. Great blobby patches of purple and black swam across his vision, over a smeared patch on the exterior of his suit visor where backwash had scorched the gold laminate and ceramic.

Below him, the Pacific hove into view off the west coast of South America. The rock – he ought to name it, really, if it was going to be his funeral pyre and entry to Valhalla combined – "Barclay's Bomb" had a ring to it – yes, the Bomb would need to complete another orbit before it got low enough into the atmosphere for him to alter the trajectory.

By the time he bypassed the day-night demarcator the Bomb had begun to skip into the upper atmosphere and create a visible bow-wave of violently dancing ionised gasses. Switching position to the crater's opposite side, he drilled another socket and emplaced the last booster, pointing along the axis of forward motion as best he could. Movement had begun to be impeded by the atmosphere, thin as it was, and when he fired up the booster the Bomb began to alter trajectory slowly yet perceptibly. Winds began to tug at him with invisible fingers. Soon, he knew, the ionisation would roast and smash him apart.

Not before hearing his Tab's bleeping confirm they were on course for an impact in the Gulf Of Carpentaria. His vision had gone, a victim of vicinity to the unforgiving boosters.

I did it! he exulted. Redeemed. I only wish I could have seen more of Earth –

A sudden and vicious hammerblow lifted him off the shaking rock, there was a brief and searing torment of heat as his suit failed –

Pangolin had never been designed to withstand the acceleration imparted by the solid fuel booster and the old spacecraft shook and rattled like an alarm clock going off . All three lives depended upon Ace, who had to clutch the booster by it's top against a landing-leg with one of the prosthetics and use the other prosthetic arm to direct the booster's base to balance the thrust. Otherwise they would fly off into interplanetary space. Kurt called out frantic corrections for the arm, swearing in an English-accented German when Ace failed to orient the booster to his liking – which was every time. The view of Arc One on the internal monitor changed size far quicker than it had done on their outbound journey, before Kurt delicately played over the attitude controls and spun Pangolin, causing the spacecraft to veer and yaw madly before a jaw-clenching Ace fought it back on course again. Deceleration lasted only a few minutes before the booster burnt out and expired and then they were reliant on the remaining fuel.

Before long their tanked oxygen had declined to danger level; the digital gauges were in the red and Kurt ordered everyone to don helmets and use their suit reserves. These, too, declined with unpleasant rapidity and Ace felt a cold sweat breaking out across her back when the suit indicator reached ten minutes.

'Not enough air left to dock and walk back,' hissed Mona. She hadn't been able to communicate with the astronomy staff via laser thanks to Pangolin's erratic course.

'I shall land by the airlock,' stated Kurt. 'Ace, find an object you can grasp with the prosthetics to prevent any movement.'

As captain, he patiently remained in the cabin whilst his two crew cycled through the miniature airlock. This time Ace had no time for the beauty of the heavens and merely made for the airlock alongside Mona and Kurt. Even with a landing just metres from the doors, her suit's oxygen indicator had reached "00.00%" and breathing was starting to get laboured until the inner airlock doors opened and all three gratefully drew lungfuls of fresh air.

Half an hour later they were able to see the flaming descent of their chosen asteroid into the Gulf of Carpentaria, amidst sober arcology staff who needed to get used to Barclay's sacrifice as penance for thirty two dead. Davy, looking haggard, seemed to think that there wouldn't be any more deaths.

'We need to get Downstairs desperately,' he kept whispering to himself. 'What happened to Pangolin is typical, typical,' he said aloud when Ace frowned at him. 'Things falling apart.'

'What I'd give to get down there,' murmured another member of staff.

'Amen,' echoed Ace. By now the Prof would – guaranteed – managed to find trouble and fall headlong into it without her to help him out.

She looked across the banks of monitors. One screen had died and the crew no longer had replacement parts for repair, so it sat in the upper right and stayed blindly blank. Across another seventeen screens she saw the immensity of the Great Australian Bight and crossed her fingers that there were no boats at sea. From this height and vantage the asteroid's shock wave impact was a visible thing, a well-defined circle of white racing outwards, followed a long way behind by a dark ring of seawater humped up. Last of all came a giant tower of water, that became low clouds, that began to spread out, that began to obscure the ocean.

Ace recalled hearing about tsunamis, waves generated far out to sea that devastated coastlines where they hit and hoped that they hadn't violated the Doctor's sketchy instructions. Already the narrow white outline of the shock wave had reached shore and blasted inland. She watched it grow fuzzier and darker as it lost energy and acquired debris.

'Agh!' gasped Emilia, standing behind Davy after earlier unsuccessfully trying to get him to rest. She reached into her boilersuit and pulled out a plastic bag that buzzed and blinked, then gingerly handed it to Ace.

In fact it was a bag within a bag within a bag, all three heat-sealed. The young woman could make out a shiny cylinder - the Doctor's UNIT-issue radio - in the innermost pouch, kept sealed to prevent any more infections getting released.

'Go ahead,' shrugged Davy. 'Can't do any more harm.'

Ripping off the tough plastic required a knife. Frantically she hit the "speak" button.

'Hello, Prof? Ace here. Go ahead. Ah – over.'

'Ace!' came a relieved voice. A strange high-pitched whine blocked the Doctor for a second. 'Sorry, have to dodge. I think the Lithoi have stopped jamming for a minute – too much to do and too much else to worry about.'

'Dodge what!' asked Ace.

'Thermal lances. Listen, Ace, I won't have long - '

All in the cramped Communications room heard his short, pithy description of "Old Ben" and what the supposed person had been. Right now –

'We're fighting a rather one-sided battle. I'm afraid I possibly miscalculated.'

'Can we help?'

There was a reply after her question, a reply that gradually faded away into an empty silence.

'Our orbit has moved us out of range,' muttered Emilia.


	21. Chapter 22

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Still Falls the Rain

The battle of New Eucla didn't occur as either party expected First blood went to the Lithoi; no trace of Brogan ever came to light and the bleak assumption was that he'd been completely disintegrated during the messy skirmish.

The Doctor also found himself embarassed; there were two Lithoi aircraft, not one, which multiplied the risks immensely.

The Lithoi found themselves almost visible. The rain that sleeted down revealed the outline of their normally-invisible craft, which is how the defenders realised they faced two alien craft, not a single one.

Another of the Timelord's guesses proved wrong. The two ghostly outlines in the driving rain never worried about the amount or direction of the squalls that hit them – he'd assumed that the Lithoi pilots would perform poorly in conditions that involved free water in very large amounts.

New Eucla's principal construction material, glass, also proved far harder to destroy than the all-wooden structures of Forrest. The tinted overlay helped to reflect a lot of energy directed at them. The Doctor stood behind a safely distant shearing shed and watched one of the ghostly craft spend thirty seconds destroying a single house from high up. A second flaw in the rain slowly descended to thirty metres above the town and fired at an abandoned house where Mike had been hiding.

A storm of glass shards flew in all directions amidst the rain, both materials twinkling, and a geyser of super-heated steam flew upwards with such force that the invisible flying eye flipped end-over-end with rain flying off it's exterior.

'Howzat,' muttered the Doctor. 'Own goal.' He slithered across the roadway and under the fire-engine's tarpaulin cover, taking a knife with him. Once underneath he cut a long, narrow horizontal slit in the smelly material and stuck the hose nozzle there. When the second flying eye came into view and range he loosed the release valve and flayed the hiding craft with a torrent that reached over a hundred metres in height and flipped the craft upside-down.

After that both stayed high, but they came after him and the fire-engine. The engine's water tank exploded with enormous force and sent metal shrapnel thudding into nearby houses.

'Good job you got out,' said a relieved Billy. 'I got your cooking pan like you asked.'

Feeling damp and worried, the Doctor brushed rain from his brow where his holed boater allowed rain in. He peered around the misted glass walls of a house with crazed windows and missing panels. More glass shrapnel fell around them with high-pitched pings and tinkles and another geyser of steam erupted towards the town hall as another house succumbed.

'The fire-engine didn't scare them off, eh?' gasped Mike, running past them with a bad case of sunburn and his clothes steaming madly.

'No. Keep moving!' shouted the Timelord. Privately, he worried that the Lithoi would find destroying the town far too hard thanks to the glass houses and even more so with the ever-present rain. If that happened, they'd then decide to go after the human refugees -

'Desperate measures,' he said to the air. Billy spied rain puddling on the horizontal surfaces of an invisible object fifty metres up and closing on them.

'Doctor Smith! We move or we fry!' he hissed, dragging at the smaller man's elbow and not shifting him at all.

Lightning flashed. A rolling peal of thunder followed, making the house shudder. The Doctor reckoned on beam trajectory, sublimation, vapour collimation and tossed his umbrella to Billy.

'Run for it!' he barked. Billy almost flew into cover amongst the buildings opposite, the strange half-seen craft in the sky turned to track his movement and the Doctor jumped from cover himself with the wok held out as a shield.

Inspired guesswork, a touch of luck, good reflexes and an outclassed opponent – he later claimed all these played a part in his not being roasted in his brogues. The guesswork was that the Lithoi would fire at him, not Billy, who merely served to attract their attention.

The wok glowed white hot and bitter, scalding metallic fumes burst from it as the gold lining boiled off and reflected the thermal beam backwards. The Doctor dropped it a fraction of a second after pointing it and still burnt his hands. His clothing, boater and hair gave off a thick cloud of steam and his nose felt as if he'd been sniffing nitric acid. His primitive reflector only reached an efficiency of five per cent. Still, this was enough to melt fascias, burst seams and crack linings on the flying eye, and it fell heavily to earth, suffering more damage as it hit.

In seconds Mike had pounced, sticking the barrel of his police-shotgun into a narrow breach uppermost on the eye and letting off a solid metal shot. Sparks flew out of the device and it spat and sizzled in the rain, crippled and useless.

A small victory, since the other Lithoi craft remained out of reach and therefore mostly out of sight. Several giant blooms of steam and discordant shattered glass fell over the deserted township as remote operators sought to avenge the destruction of their first airborne craft with the surviving second. At some point in this thermic barrage Denny went missing, never to be seen again. As with Brogan, no trace of him was ever found, and the memorial in the cemetery used an ancient pre-Big Crash photograph that flattered him by fifty years.

'What can we do?' asked a terrified Billy Barakan. Dodging killer beams from alien spaceships that remained almost invisible was new to him, and he felt the urge to ask Doctor Smith what to do. "Urge" written in letters fifty yards tall.

The pair were sheltering behind the framework of a house that had suffered total failure of all it's window frames, allowing gusts of sodden air to smack them in the faces.

'Improvise!' grinned the Doctor, not feeling anywhere near as cheerful as he sounded. More thunder rolled around the township, rattling window panes (or those that remained seated) and jarring the ground. Despite being early afternoon, the light levels were those of early evening.

Billy looked south, to where sinister grey storm clouds were sweeping in over a fractious and disturbed ocean, all shot through with lightning bolts and made vague by sheets of rain, sheets in the literal sense of the word, giant laminates of precipitated water hanging from the sky.

He looked back at the strange doctor, who looked puzzled and who stuck one forefinger into the ground and another into the air.

'How do we improvise a gun or something that destroys hidden things in the air?' asked Billy. The light was bad, yellowish and pale thanks to the amount of water in the atmosphere, but Doctor Smith seemed worried in a way that he hadn't been up till now. He leaned back against the lower brick wall of the house and looked upwards, glancing over at Billy.

'Thunder without lightning?' he muttered. The air fizzled with energy and acrid scents as the hidden flying eye scorched another house, with the inevitable bang and tinkle of glass splinters.

Mike came limping along the backstreet to them, his sunburn now giant blisters all down the exposed skin of his left side. He lurched up to the pair and dropped next to the sheltering walls, casting careful glances all round.

'I can't find the others! I think we're the last!' he gasped, stinking of wet wool and parboiled pork.

Billy stared at him, seeing thick vapours drifting upwards from the deputy's clothes, and inhaling – briefly, before his lungs seized and spasmed – the horrid scent of boiled human being.

'When did the lightning last strike?' asked Doctor Smith. Billy stared at him, wiping the driven rain out of his eyes at such a bizarre question. Given their battleground, the deaths that had taken place so far, the likelihood that they'd be roasted into vapour in seconds – "when did lightning last strike" rapidly occupied the hinterland of stupid questions. What could –

'Look at that puddle,' instructed Doctor Smith, pointing at a dirty, muddy smear across the roadway. Mike instead looked at the stranger, clearly wondering what on earth was going on as thought processes behind that bland exterior. Billy looked at the Doctor, then at the puddle. He looked at Mike, then looked back at the puddle, which showed dancing, intersecting rings pulsing back and forwards.

'Why is that? There's vibrations there that shouldn't be,' he muttered, thinking aloud and not worried about any eavesdropping. Grains of sand shifted in the puddle. Physics, practical day-to-day stuff that he dealt with thanks to his dad's insistence, told him that there had to be an input of energy from such symptoms.

'Doctor - ' he began, before realising that Doctor Smith had produced a strange metal cylinder and was talking into it. Billy jumped in surprise and wonder when the strange cylinder began to talk back, and belatedly recognised a radio transmission device – but one a fraction the size of the ones he'd seen as a child in the Heritage laminates.

This conversation suffered interruption when the Lithoi's flying eye came hunting them, possibly drawn by the electronic signalling. Doctor Smith harried them from their insecure hiding place to another formed by the collapse of two residences into the street, creating a fractal pyramid of debris that they both burrowed into. He then relayed a description of the unearthly creature that had masqueraded inside a fake human being, hiding beneath a plastic exterior.

Once again thunder minus lightning interrupted them, rattling their entire hideout. The sound of the Lithoi's flying eye destroying another house came clearly to them as evidence of how close the alien device was to them.

'We're fighting a rather one-sided battle. I'm afraid I possibly miscalculated,' stated Doctor Smith. 'Also, a third party seems to have intervened. If I didn't know better I'd say the dingoes were here driving bulldozers – Ace? Can you hear me? Hello?'

Billy would have shaken his head if the constricted space and miscellaneous sharp edges hadn't made any such gesture risky. Doctor Smith might be right about alien invaders, but there was no denying he was mad as a box of frogs!

To the Doctor, mystery thunder without any accompanying lightning meant one thing: explosive force administered to Planet Earth. Initially he'd been inclined to dismiss it as another Lithoi plot, but after the flying eye kept right on destroying property he'd become less sure. Why carry out two types of attack when only one was needed?

For one thing, the thunder had a suspiciously regular rhythm. BOOM boom boom BOOM, repeated with pauses. His flippant remark about dingoes with bulldozers had only been partly a joke, since anything able to impact the ground and create such a resonance would be immense, easily several tons at the very least.

'Doctor Smith,' whispered Billy. 'Doctor – Doctor! Come and see!'

From his hiding place inside the giant pile of rubbish, Billy saw a massive grey-green pillar of flesh descend onto the marshy roadway of New Eucla, stamp it's stubby taloned toes into the ground and move onward. He had a strange suspicion about what was making the noise and the movement.

When the Doctor slid out from cover, dislodging glass and wood chips from his back with a deft wriggle, he stood as witness to a sight few others had seen and lived. Not fifty yards from him loomed a monster, a creature clad in dark green scales that loomed as big as the buildings around it, and as long as the street before and behind it.

'A Dilly!' breathed Billy. 'Giant crocodile!' he added, un-necessarily.

This additional description was gilding the lilly. The Doctor stared at a mutation created over generations thanks to the input of radiation from the Great Northern War, not too much to kill off the original strain, not too little to fail to affect the genotype. No, this porridge was just right. A thirty metre monster weighing in at twenty tonnes, able to destroy a house with a sweep of it's tail, teeth as long as sabres, and a disposition akin to that of a bear with a migraine. A week-long migraine at that. He realised that the monster must have been lurking in the ocean depths off the littoral of the Gulf of Carpentaria when his "flyswatter" hit, and been driven ashore by the turbulent seas. New Eucla constituted the nearest land with the easiest access beyond the shoreline.

The giant antediluvian creature moved slowly into the heart of New Eucla, dragging it's limbs and a wrack of seaweed along for the ride, sounding a muted bellow.

The Lithoi, not used to free water in any significant amounts and hence not very aware of marine fauna and certainly not aware of megafauna, panicked when the Dilly showed up on their flying eye's scanner. A blast of superheated steam and a sonic boom came as they abruptly fired at the huge crocodile, which leaped backwards as it's scales crisped and burnt.

The Doctor dragged Billy backwards, knowing what would probably come next and wanting to get away from the havoc.

They were only just in time; with a screeching hiss the blinded Dilly launched itself at the source of it's torment and clamped it's mighty jaws around the flying eye, being roasted from the inside as it did, collapsing in a torrent of sparks and shattered plastic. The tail lashed once, twice, shattering buildings on either side of the road and then all that could be heard was the pattering of rain.

Mike, Billy and the Doctor were the survivors, and Mike looked seriously scalded. He stared in amazement and disbelief at the corpse of the Dilly and the smashed Lithoi craft.

'Did – you didn't _plan_ that, did you?' he asked.

'No. Happy coincidence.'

Billy looked at the smashed, waterlogged, burnt or windowless buildings all around and shook his head.

'Now what,' he muttered.

'Hopefully our uninvited guests will get the message, pack up and go home,' beamed the Doctor.


	22. Chapter 23

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Would You Believe?

Washington's martial rigour had decreased significantly in the past decade, but they could still marshall an imposing ceremony for their very occasional visitors. A joint Russo-Japanese mission with new mutant chlorella strains to exchange had been their last outside physical contact, seven months previously. The Russians liked their pomp, and the Japanese liked their procedure. What the Brits in the original Bernal sphere liked –

Vice President Waukegan shook his head. From his reading, the old British had been sticklers for ancient ceremonies that went back thousands of years. Doctor Haritanian, on the other hand, seemed very ill-at-ease when he came out of the big boarding airlock and found an honour guard of US Marines waiting for him, ceremonial (and unloaded for safety reasons) induction rifles pointing at the walls above. Their old dress uniforms were handed down from the previous generation and would have revealed nips and tucks to a close observer, but the whole thing went well.

The Veep, as he knew his nickname went, personally conducted Doctor Haritanian to the Closed Conference Room and shooed out the waiting staff, all except Miss Martigan the scribe.

'Now, Davy,' he began, dropping any formal address and indicating that the real discussion had begun. 'Tell me what's so important that I sent the MEV to collect you and get rid of my personal staff.'

Davy took a deep breath. Visiting Washington always made him feel awkward; if their paramilitary culture had helped them survive, it also made guests feel out of place. He was also beholden to the Vice President. With Pangolin out of commission for weeks and Dart 3 not suitable for reusable sphere-to-sphere transit, Arcology One had needed to plead their case for what amounted to a bus trip in outer space via M3. His requirement for discretion also meant trying to influence the Veep by inuendo. Waukegan's stolid matter-of-fact approach to everything made this difficult, as did the necessity of communicating labouriously via signal laser thanks to the jamming.

Now, sitting in the blindingly white, aseptic meeting room under the scrutiny of Orbital America's highest official and his "scribe" who probably doubled as personal spy and ninja bodyguard, Davy felt incongrously sweaty and foolish.

'I had to meet face-to-face to avoid eavesdropping.'

Waukegan's heavy brows contracted.

'Damn! You mean the Chinese sphere is still active!'

Davy coughed in embarassment. As expected, a touch of paramilitary paranoia. Damn! If only California had been the senior sphere aloft!

'Ah – no. Not at all. Eavesdropped from Downstairs.'

The Veep sat back in thinly-veiled surprise.

'Downstairs? There's nobody with the ability to - '

'Mister Vice President, I know who's been carrying out the jamming. The same peo – ah, the same agents who blew up our shuttle in mid-air, and the one that got down to Australia. The same peo – agents, agents who started the Great Northern War.'

This puzzled the other man, who plainly couldn't reconcile the possible culprits.

'I hope you aren't going to suggest the Australians are responsible, Davy! They're still at the steam engine and horse-cart stage. They aren't eavesdropping on anyone.'

Looking around the pristine room, as immaculate as any operating theatre in the Archipelago might be, Davy chewed his inner lip. This would be an intellectual leap.

'By third party I don't mean another human entity, Marty. I mean aliens. Real genuine aliens from outer space.'

The Veep looked surprised before bursting out in a guffaw of laughter that quickly died when he saw how serious Haritanian was.

'You cannot be serious!'

'We have people working Downstairs who flushed one of these aliens out of hiding.'

Miss Martigan's scribbling on her electronic notepad paused and she looked up. Waukegan shook his head.

'Dunno what you're trying to pull, Davy. You're familiar with Occam's Razor surely? Aliens!'

Haritanian continued on. Whilst Waukegan didn't look persuaded, Miss Martigan's eyes had shone with a sincere curiosity.

'They've been here on Planet Earth for decades, hiding out in the desert. Their biggest asset has been secrecy – we've never dreamed they ever existed until Doctor Smith warned us. These things blend in by hiding inside a human-shaped robot. They can't manage human behaviour very well, they end up behaving like the Wanderers. Our people in New Eucla have one of these robots.'

Miss Martigan whispered to the Veep.

'Is that why they evacuated?' he asked. Both American spheres had seen a minor exodus along the coastline of the Great Australian Bight with no sound reason and the jamming prevented any radio questioning of Arcology One.

'Partly. We expected an attack on the town once these things realised we knew about them. It's what happened to Forrest – the township our first shuttle landed at.'

Miss Martigan whispered again.

'How could I forget. Davy, did your people destabilise an asteroid? That impact in the Gulf off the coast is too much of a coincidence. I can tell you, that worried us.'

Haritanian sighed.

'Yes, that was us. Our – ah – adviser, Doctor John Smith, told us to drop one of the Trojans into the ocean. To scare off the aliens.'

'Hasn't worked, then, has it!' replied the Veep, smiling thinly. That was _one_ mystery out of the way. Washington's astronomy staff had been alarmed out of their wits when they spotted the terminal trajectory of the falling missile, fearing either a natural catastrophe or man-made disaster.

'I can see I'm not persuading you, Marty. Look, the reason I came over in person was to warn you that your Carlsbad Crew might have been compromised. These aliens, called "Lithoi" apparently, can control human minds. They did it to the Mayor of New Eucla, had him working for them and trying to kill Doctor Smith. The control wears off over time so they repeat the process.'

Of all the accusations or warnings he might have made, this one was guaranteed to be taken most seriously by Washington's senior staff. Every trace of affability disappeared from the Veep's face and posture, and he leaned forward. His face, normally expressive, became cold and hard.

' "Compromised"? You think my people Downstairs are double-agents? Why not just accuse us up here in Washington or California!'

Davy shook his head. This wasn't going well.

'No, no, no. Your selection and recruitment procedures were as strict as ours. Nothing alien could have gotten aboard either of our spheres, robot or no. And, because we were strict, no alien trying to brainwash our crew got close enough.'

Waukegan let out a long, slow breath.

'Enough of this horse-puckey, Davy. I'll call in one of my aides, they'll give you a tour of the sphere, then you can go back. No more talk of aliens.'

Miss Martigan, who was an efficient and practical office worker and no kind of ninja, came across a red flag when transcribing her notes into the general sphere database.

"CAUTION!" flashed her main monitor screen. "PERSON OF INTEREST", followed by highlighted text: _Doctor John Smith, Doctor Smith_. "REASON" followed by pages of references to the big history datacore, with dates and times. She left her transcription to chase down a randomly chosen date, April 14th 1977. In the abstract, a "Doctor John Smith" helped repel an amphibious attack on the eastern shore of Madagascar; the attackers were either not described or the text was redacted beyond her security clearance. On another date, March 1972, he'd helped prevent a terrorist nerve-gas attack on the Five Power Security Conference in London. In 1986 he'd surfaced at the highly-secret South Polar Tracking Station and helped to repel another attack – and there were other dates, some going back to the early years of the American Revolution.

No matter how the technical staff processed chlorella they still couldn't come up with a decent artificial cigar, decided Marty Waukegan. As Veep he'd been priviledged to smoke the last genuine imported Cuban five years earlier; a live video feed allowed seventy or eighty other staff to enjoy his enjoyment vicariously.

Scowling, he glared at the ranks of cultures that spanned whole curving kilometres beyond his viewpoint. Ranks of banks of tanks, he sourly dismissed them. Essential for protein and oxygen, but my God! they were dull and boring. Oh for the green hills of Earth.

He turned back into his suite, angry at himself for being angry. That wild tale Davy Haritanian spun earlier in the cycle had come back to haunt him. Covert aliens? As if! "Pssshawright" as his son liked to sneer.

And yet. And yet. There was that inexplicable decline of the background radiation count of the Northern Hemisphere down on Planet Earth. The jamming. Every shuttle-capable site on the planet being nuked. A disease with no known origin killing fifty per cent of the Great Northern War's survivors. The outbreak of the Great Northern War itself, an event of unsurpassed insanity.

What really hit home had been Davy's recounting of the supposed alien infiltrators. Lizards wearing human suits, able to look like the real thing but unable to properly fit in. Aberrant behaviour. Bizarre social interactions. Inappropriate body language.

He thought back forty years to a young subaltern, Major Martell Waukegan, in charge of the MEV that carried refugees from the disintegrating UN sphere, "Eden". Raucous, violent and armed refugees who had been led or inspired by a character who called himself "Shwayo" and who could barely talk coherently. Who had tried to lead an armed attack on the MEV's command capsule. Who had, along with the cargo of refugees, been "vacc'ed": vented into space when the command crew blew the MEV's airlocks.

"_Your selection and recruitment procedures were as strict as ours_". Yes. But some weren't, were they? The chaos and disorder surrounding the creation and crewing of the Eden sphere would have definitely allowed an infiltrator to get aboard. And then begin the process of sabotage and subversion.

Waukegan looked down at his hands, half-expecting to see the blood that had floated off his power-gauntlets and into the command capsule interior, causing the crew to swear and come after the globules with paper towel. The only man he'd ever killed, one of the refugees armed with a plastic dart-gun who tried to prevent the officer from returning to the capsule.

'Sir?' came a voice over the door speaker. Miss Martigan.

'Enter,' he called, and the door irised open to allow her in, scuttling across the suite. His efficient scribe looked worried. More than that, a stray hair dangled over her left eye.

'Sir, I tried to upload the minutes of your meeting.'

The Veep raised a non-commital eyebrow.

'That Doctor that – er – Doctor Haritanian mentioned, Doctor John Smith, sir. He's flagged up throughout the whole history datacore.'

Ah – Doctor John Smith. The Branson Mansion's man on the ground, Downstairs. Davy hadn't explained exactly _how_ the other Doctor managed to get down there and now that the Veep reconsidered, Davy had made a point of not explaining this. There were no survivors from either of the one-way shuttlecraft sent down from Arc One and nobody else could manage a landing, so how – oh, later, later.

'And why are you telling me this?' he asked, with a touch more acid than intended. Miss Martigan flinched.

'Sir, there's a memo in the historical records from the President.' She looked down at her notepad to read from it. 'It said "If you happen upon a Doctor John Smith, or he happens upon you, and he offers advice, then be sure to take it. He is only ever present in times of danger and discord but he is a most certain aid and comfort to humanity".'

Waukegan frowned. Pretty flowery language!

'President MacLee said that?' MacLee survived the Great Northern War only by months and the ex-Alabama senator hadn't been known for rarified speech. More of a "grits and hominy" woman.

Miss Martigan swallowed.

'Oh, no sir. Not President MacLee. President Abraham Lincoln!'


	23. Chapter 24

CHAPTER NINETEEN: If There Is Something

Arcology's One's orbit would eventually bring it back into range of the Doctor's radio transmitter after several hours, so Ace was startled to be woken from sleep by the device buzzing furiously at her, less than thirty minutes after having lost the signal.

She had been assigned an empty bunk in Swansea. The previous owner had died from Barclay's Bug, been cremated and all their property put up for either recycling or appropriation on the common database. Knowing that she slept in dead man's shoes might have bothered Ace, if she'd been less weary.

So she reluctantly elbowed herself upright, grabbed the radio and clicked the Receive button.

'Hello?' she croaked.

'Ah! Ace! Splendid!'

'Doctor?'

The voice was faint and distorted, yet there was no mistaking that Scottish burr.

'Yes, it's me. Alive and whole. More than can be said for New Eucla. Between flood, giant crocodiles and alien ray-guns, it's looking a bit battered.'

The young woman opened her mouth to ask how he could transmit beyond the curve of the planet below, then shut her mouth again. He'd managed it; that was enough.

'Time is short, Ace. You and the Arcology staff need to track down the Lithoi's base. All indications are that it's in the desert, the Nullarbor Plain. They haven't moved or evacuated as I'd hoped.' For a second she could picture him standing glumly under a gloomy sky, sad that his best efforts to resolve things with minimal force had failed. 'Get back to me when you have a result.'

Is that all! she silently cursed. Her conscience didn't allow her to remain in bed and needled her until her uneasy doze ended and she got up to find a crew member.

The sphere had moved into it's deep night cycle and her eyes took time to adjust when she left the stark room. Following the random patterns of lights allowed her to look out of the observation strip and see Earth, blue and beautiful, wheeling across the sky.

Well, that was as close as Arc One's population would ever get unless she and the Prof got their act together. Where was that Communications shack?

The claustrophobic shack had two people on duty, rather than the normal single person. One watcher was a stranger to Ace; the other was Christos Abramovitch, busy with a Tab and a set of notes. Another monitor screen had died amongst the bank of working ones, leaving a second blank space that hinted at Arc One's gradual disintegration.

'Wotcha,' she greeted them, to looks of puzzlement. 'Hello.'

'Hmm,' frowned Christos. He still felt dire after having contracted Barclay's Bug and didn't feel well enough to bother with chit-chat.

'The Doctor said we need to try and locate the Lithoi's base in Australia,' began Ace, brightly. She didn't feel especially bright or cheerful and pretended in order to annoy the stoney-faced Abramovitch. The scion looked at her with a wan expression.

'Thank you, Miss. That is exactly what I have spent eight hours trying to do.'

Ace made a small tutting sound that might have been commiseration or criticism.

'Not going too well, then?'

Christos made a tutting noise of his own.

'Miss, we don't even know for certain that an alien base exists. All we have to go on is your companion's assurance and an empty robotic shell.'

'Hey, if the Prof – the Doctor – says that there's an alien base you can bank on it!' retorted Ace, hotly. Christos looked amused at her insistence.

'Mizz - '

'Ace. Call me "Ace".'

'Very well. Ace, I exaggerated. I used simple trigonometry to narrow down the area these aliens might be hiding in.'

He showed her several pages of calculations on his Tab, working backwards.

'I knew the approximate data for the inbound Chinese missiles. Plugging the numbers in – ah, cutting out the mathematics, I found the intercepting beams to come from a region fifty kilometres square. Istvan, bring it up on the screens.'

The other watcher, Istvan, brought up an orbital map of southern Australia and displayed the Nullarbor Plain with the area defined by Christos outlined as a red square.

'Still a pretty big area,' muttered Ace, chewing a thumbnail. Istvan and Christos both nodded.

'Two and a half thousand square kilometres,' agreed Istvan. Christos leaned back in his wicker chair and stretched a few cramps away.

'Yes, pretty big. Not only is it a great empty expanse of desert, but I cannot find any single indication that our uninvited guests are there. Nothing whatsoever!'

His annoyance and frustration showed in his tone. There were no physical structures, no tracks, no roads or trails, no landing strips or signs of accomodation. No infra-red signature, no radio or electromagnetic transmissions, no apparent source of the mysterious jamming. Nothing visibly flew even when he knew that New Eucla had been attacked by aircraft.

'This is all recorded footage of Australia, Ace. We've kept a very close watch on it since we intended to land there and never, not once, not in decades of watching, have we ever seen anything unusual!'

'How soon till we orbit over them again?'

Christos checked his watch.

'About three hours.' For this next passage he would have the astronomy staff using ultra-violet scanning and checking the plain with their telescopes. If they could – those millions of tons of water blasted into the local weather system would be falling from the skies under a cloud blanket.

Whilst Christos' mind ran through possible detection methods, Ace perched on the edge of the control console and swung a leg back and forth. She caught Istvan glancing at her and felt grateful that she'd ditched her usual togs for the moment, or he'd probably be outright staring at her legs.

Hang on – she wrinkled her brow. What had that idea been? What she _wasn't_ wearing. What _wasn't_ present.

'Perhaps,' she began, articulating her idea aloud. 'We need to look for what's _not_ there.'

Christos looked at her with interest. Istvan cocked his head like an attentive dog. She carried on.

'These alien Lithoi are centuries more advanced than we are, right? So they have all sorts of electronic gadgets that stop you detecting them, and they can generate holograms to prevent people seeing them.'

Istvan and Christos exchanged glances.

'Speculation, but reasonable. That robot contraption in New Eucla is beyond even the Japskis,' said the scion.

'Okay. We therefore have no way to detect them directly. Can't be done. Not possible.'

Istvan laughed briefly before choking it off out of respect for his superior.

'However. The Prof is always at me, trying to get me to think outside the box. I say we look for evidence of what these aliens cause to not be present.'

'Rather vague. Can you be more specific?'

Ace ran over a series of ideas.

'Water. It seems to be deadly poisonous to them. See if any local streams or rivers have been dammed or diverted or if weather patterns changed to keep rainclouds away from a particular spot. Animals. If wild animals steer clear of humans then I bet they'd run a mile to keep away from weird-smelling alien lizards Ah – food. If they've been living here for decades then they must have to eat. Any evidence of crops being nicked?'

Christos smacked Istvan on the back, hard enough to be heard.

'Ace! If it weren't a demeaning and misogynistic throwback, I'd kiss your hand!' He dialled up a number on his Tab without delay. 'Solly! Solly, get over to Communications, right now! I don't care if you were asleep or what time it is! Now! Nownownow!'

Solly, the lanky and humourless Nigerian biologist that Ace had encountered days before, loomed as large and humourless as before in the Communications shack. His eyes were bloodshot, he yawned a lot and he looked at her with more interest than he should have.

'Solly, sit yourself down here. This is Ace. She's come up with a killer paradigm to help us track down the aliens. Yes, the aliens. Now, what do you know about migratory installative selection?'

Ace felt reminded of "Vision On" when she watched Christos and Solly arguing and altering their virtual scrawl on the monitor screens, a veritable cascade of colours and graphics. Solly had been annonyingly slow on the uptake to begin with, failing to realise that their computer design package would isolate the alien's base, if the base actually existed.

As it most probably did. If only she'd managed to keep up to the Doctor's 21st Century technology as it applied to music, never mind graphics or maps or atlases.

Solly finished by explaining to Istvan what he'd managed to do: by aggregating the migration patterns and herd movement of Australian wildlife, the two and a half thousand square kilometres target had been narrowed down to an area of only fifty where that wildlife no longer moved. The data didn't allow any more precision than that; it would have been nice to have eroded paths and trails to define the area more exactly, but there simply weren't enough animals passing that way.

Christos felt satisfied that they'd defined an area to be avoided at all costs. He wondered if he could persuade the other scions, Emilia especially, to get Pangolin repaired as a matter of urgency. Another trip to the Trojan asteroids and they could drop rocks from space onto these alien monsters.

Istvan peered at the monitor screens, enlarging their new zone of concern. No, still no sign of anything visible. In an hour's time the sphere's circumpolar track would bring them into sight of the continent for real, and he wondered if there would be any indication in a live feed of what lurked down there.

'Hello, Doctor?' ventured Ace on her radio. 'Can you hear me?'

'They might be jamming again,' cautioned Christos. 'And we're not in direct line of sight yet, so - '

'Ah, Ace! Splendid!' came the distorted tones of the Doctor. 'Solved your little problem?'

Istvan laid a restraining arm on her before she answered, holding a finger to his lips.

'Oh – yeah. Righto. Yep, problem solved, Prof.'

'Good. Now, DO NOTHING with that information!'

'When are you coming back Upstairs?' she asked.

'Not for a while. I've a rather risky job to do. And no you can't come along,' he added after a short pause. 'Humans not allowed.'

The connection ended with a crisp snap, which meant Ace worried over exactly what the Prof meant by "rather risky", since his gift for understating danger usually surfaced when he tried to keep her out of any mutual mischief.

Christos and Istvan, naturally, picked up on the "humans not allowed" phrase.

'I'm not going to ask,' said the scion. Istvan merely looked at her with a wondering, weary glance that had several hundred years of Magyar history built into it.


	24. Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY:If It Takes All Night

The aftermath of battle is frequently less glorious than the events preceding it. In New Eucla, this truism was overturned by nothing more or less than the weather.

Taken from an isometric viewpoint, the township looked battered. Parts had fallen inwards or outwards, had been shattered, burnt down or blown up, been crushed underfoot or blasted into the heavens. Only a fraction of the buildings remained intact or undamaged, and the whole township weltered under an overlay of water deposited from the clouds or left behind by the mini-tsunami. Since the liquid left behind was seawater, salt pattens and traceries began to evolve on every level surface in fans and rills of dusty white.

Winds from the sea brought clear patches to the skies above. Sunlight, raw, bright, unapologetic Australian sunlight, shone on the gloomy vista of New Eucla, and the Great Australian Bight, and a million rainbows came to life.

Mike, hard-boiled, practical and matter-of-fact as he was, without an ounce (or twenty five grams) of reflective sentiment within him, stared at the fantastic array of rainbows that shimmered from New Eucla to the horizon. A single rainbow, okay, he'd seen that before. A couple in the sky together, yes, he'd seen that once or twice. Fifty thousand rainbows in the sky all at once – this was – and he felt at a loss to find a curse that fit adequately -

'This Doctor. He's summat special. Right?' enquired Billy, standing awestruck next to the new mayor.

Mike ran through a string of practiced curses that lasted thirty seconds without repeating.

'Bill! Look up at the skies, mate! I saw this bludger blow up an alien flying saucer with _an effing frying pan_!'

A delicate tap on his lower vertebrae warned him that the bludger had arrived in person. When Mike swung around he found that the diminutive traveller had lowered the offending article (his umbrella) and was standing poised on tiptoes.

'A wok, actually, Mike. Subtle difference. Closest I could find to a parabolic reflector. Now, do you have a refrigeration plant in town?'

Not for the first time, Mike paused at the sheer strangeness of the question. The Doctor lowered himself to terra firma and pursed his lips.

'Cryogenic sto – no, no, entirely out of place. Ah! A salt-meat store!'

Billy pointed to the west, where the township stored meat: salted, smoked and dry-cured.

'Any chance of there being fresh meat there?'

'Ah – yes. Yes. I think. Only a day or two old,' stuttered Mike. He found himself mentally unbalanced by the vistor, who always seemed to be two or three steps ahead of everyone else.

'Do you play chess?' asked Billy. His old man had carved the playing pieces for half a dozen sets of the game by hand, from coral, from soapstone, from driftwood; and he'd insisted it was an excellent preparation for life with all it's allegories and analogies.

'Why yes! Two-dimensional, three dimensional and four-dimensional. Are you an afficionado?'

Billy raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar word.

'An affunkshondo, no. But my dad explained about the game, and how you play it, and how the good players are able to think ten or twenty moves ahead.'

Doctor Smith didn't say anything, merely rocking back and forth on his heels, a sly twinkle in his eyes.

'I reckon you could think a couple of hundred moves ahead of anyone else, Doctor Smith, with ten games on the go at once. You got an end-game for us yet?'

The Doctor faced Billy Barakan and felt a touch of hubris. A touch of hubris, and another feeling. Righteous justification, perhaps. Homo Sapiens – a redoubtable species! No wonder he felt so fond of them.

'Billy, you must think me cold-blooded – whoops, no, bad analogy with our current opponents! You must think I'm a calculating rascal.'

With rare candour, the Doctor cleared his throat, drove the tip ofhis umbrella into the soggy ground of New Eucla and confessed.

'I do plot, and plan, and prevaricate. I could sit down and explain what I intended to do, and why, and what alternatives there might be, and what I'd have to take into account – but there usually isn't time.'

Mike rubbed his blistered face.

'Oh, and there isn't much time now?'

'There certainly isn't!' replied the Doctor. 'We've not only thwarted the Lithoi's plan to destroy your township, but we've spread news of them up and down the coast. Their secret is out and they will take drastic measures to prevent humans from threatening them.'

He didn't elaborate. Drastic included the one scenario he feared above all else, the deliberate release of another engineered disease like The Phage, except that this one would need to be even more deadly, a pathogen of rare and particular lethality. One cooked up in a hurry that killed every living thing stone dead, regardless of species.

More than needing to elaborate, he needed to make amends. Six people were now dead, killed by the Lithoi's flying eyes. A human being might only carry the freight of this moral burden for a decade or two, until mortality intervened and removed the guilt: the Doctor would carry his self-imposed sentence for several centuries, at the very least.

'Here's an explanation, Billy, and Mike. I made a considerable mistake, assuming that the Lithoi would only have a single flying weapon. They had two. They weren't operated by a crew-member, instead they ran by remote control. I was wrong about that, too. If that Dilly hadn't appeared – and no, I really didn't plan that – we'd have been in serious trouble.'

Mike rubbed his blistered skin and shrugged.

'You weren't to know,' he said, at which the diminutive, dapper man froze into a posture that reminded both men of their parents about to inflict corporal punishment.

'I didn't _know_. I could have _guessed_,' he said, very quietly.

'So what's your plan?' asked Billy.

The Doctor shrugged.

'The Lithoi know a great deal about _us_. We know practically nothing about _them_, and I intend to address that imbalance. I'm going to take a dozen kangaroo steaks out into the bush and track down the dingoes for an exchange of information.'

Mike stared and Billy frowned. The young man didn't even begin to debate the matter that dingoes were wild animals, a species of dog, and they might be able to communicate between themselves but human beings were certainly not able to talk to them!

'You can't do that! They don't go looking for humans, the dingoes, but if you go trespassing on their territory they'll likely tear you to bits!'

With a wink, tapping the end of his brolly against his nose, the Doctor grinned.

'Ah, yes – "human". I'd be in trouble indeed, if I were one!'

Turning sharply on his heel, he strode off with his umbrella acting as a walking stick, stirring up the shallow muddy puddles left in the flood's wake. Minutes later he was trudging across the plains again, headng out into the desert on a bearing of 285° with a whole clutch of salted kangaroo steaks dangling from his umbrella handle on a length of twine.

He didn't know exactly when the dingoes would pick up his trail thanks to smell or sound, and he didn't know where their territory began as the wild dogs' boundary would be marked with urine-spotted markers completely invisible to human eyes. It took a good three hour's hike before he began to feel confident that he'd gone beyond any normal human area of activity and into the genuine wilderness of the bleakly spectacular Nullarbor Plains.

The vista was one of endless, gently rolling plains, spotted with clusters of rock outcrops, acres of scrubby sedges and grasses and all the possible variations of red, brown, copper or golden earth tones. Silver, too, where sunlight began to glint off puddles and patches of marshy ground inundated by his "flyswatter". Within a few days there'd be an explosion of colour where long-dormant seeds came to life and sprouted and blossomed.

Without turning his head, the Doctor caught a peripheral glimpse of movement at the corner of his eye: a sudden motion amongst the waving grasses, deliberate and not natural.

Excellent! he mused. My feet are beginning to ache. A nice pause would hit the spot.

He trotted onwards, making an ostentatious effort to look about and seek a suitable arena. If he was going to entertain an audience, he needed the appropriate setting.

Fifty metres on, he came across a small jumble of boulders in a bare patch of dark, ruddy moist earth.

'Good enough!' he declared to the air, taking a seat on the highest white rock and removing the kangaroo steaks from his umbrella. Now he had to sit back and be patient.

In fact he lay back and tipped his hat over his eyes, giving the appearance of a nonchalant traveller taking a brief nap. Counting to five hundred, he then sat up and removed the hat, and hey presto –

a wary line of a dozen dingoes looked back at him, having come out of cover or hiding, from

where they had been watching and trailing him. At the sight of his awakening several stopped moving slowly forward and raised their hackles, growling.

_Don't _smile, he reminded himself. _Don't_ smile and especially don't grin. Both were human facial expressions likely to be interpreted as a threat by a canine.

'Good afternoon. I am the Doctor,' he announced, standing up and bowing. 'With a present.'

A kangaroo steak got tossed to the dingoes, who scuffled and argued about who got to tear at the meat: from which behaviour (and that immediately following) their unearthly observer differentiated at least two hundred different sounds. Such a level of communication implied intelligence at least equal to that of human beings of age two years old, and an intelligence definitely far beyond the old pre-Crash fauna of the Australian outback.

From observing the pack in action, working out which of them was the immediate leader became easier.

'As I said: the Doctor. Allow me to introduce myself properly.'

Moving slowly forward, he approached a big male, one with a white splash of fur underneath his chin. The wild dog bared it's teeth until it caught a whiff of the Timelord's scent and the animal's reaction was comical; both ears perked up, the dog jerked it's head back and pranced backwards before slowly and cautiously slinking forward, head down, to sniff at the Doctor's trouser cuffs.

'Gallifreyan. Not human,' explained the Doctor. He threw them another steak and then sat down. 'Let me tell you a story ...'

It was hard work, communicating with the dingoes. They had no contact with or concept of pictograms, so initially the Doctor made a mud model of a Lithoi. The pack bared their teeth at the crude figure, so he knew they recognised it as one of the alien lizard infiltrators. Next he drew a Lithoi in the earth – yes, they understood that when he pointed between the two differentiations. Then came a model of a dingo, and here he had to stretch their intellect by indicating a sketched dingo in the earth for each member of the pack, trying to get across the concept of numbers. Then back to the Lithoi; after an hour he could see that they didn't grasp the particularity of numbers but could distinguish relatively between "one", "few" and "many". According to the pack leader, there were "many" "many" Lithoi.

_Fiddlesticks!_ he fumed. "Many many" as a dingo concept might well translate into human mathematics as easily "hundreds" if not "thousands".

Well, he'd come here to find out what no human being had managed so far: in-depth information about the alien intruders lurking out in the distant plains, even if what he'd discovered was unpalatable. His fond imagining that the Lithoi numbered only a few dozen who might very well be intimidated into departing Planet Earth if threatened sufficiently, began to recede into a faint recollection.

By this time the supply of kangaroo steaks had vanished into the eager jaws and maws of the expectant dingoes, who now began to display an unpleasantly focussed interest in his person. The pack leader became bolder, sniffing closer and closer to the Timelord's exposed skin; the other pack members began to close in, slowly and warily at first, then with increasing confidence.

Moving faster than any human being would ever be able to manage, the Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver from a pocket with his left hand and darted forward, grasping the pack leader's hot and slimy tongue with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. The big animal tried to bite, found that to do so would sever his tongue and started to buck and thrash before a concentrated wall of sonic battery assaulted the delicate ears of the dingo pack. They scattered and fled, yelping and scattering urine in panic.

Seconds later the only two visible creatures on the Nullarbor Plain were a small, dapper man with an umbrella and straw boater, and a cringing dingo.

'Stay!' warned the Doctor, pointing at the now subdued dingo. He stood upright and cast about. Nobody and nothing now present. Good! It took a fair amount of concentration and application to sketch the rock outcrop he stood alongside, the cringing dingo, the far Nullarbor plain and a collection of Lithoi, with himself and his trademark umbrella in two places – the rock outcrop and the Lithoi horde.

At that the wild dog bared it's teeth. Only until it witnessed the sonic screwdriver –

'There? Over there? Nor-nor-west? Eighteen degrees from magnetic north?'

Finally the animal slunk behind the Doctor's legs, rubbing against him, which seemed to be dingo-lingo for "right on the money".

'Hmm. But no concept of distance, eh?'

Unpredictably, the wild dog kept station with him for the entire journey across the rolling plains, even if it did keep well behind and frequently ducked into cover. The shades of evening were beginning to empurple the shadows by the time he got close enough to the Lithoi's base to view it through his trusty telescope.

His low whistle startled both of them. It was the only sound present, apart from a gentle murmur from the winds at dusk. No birdsong, no insects, no passing wild animals. And the reason for such an acoustically bland environment? That reason stood beyond them, a hundred metres tall on the plains.

Imagine a slate-grey mushroom one hundred metres tall, one hundred metres wide, composed of a ceramic composite resistant to any flora's attempt to populate it. Imagine that same mushroom concealed by a diaphanous veil that covered almost twice the original surface area, pegged out on the plains.

_Interesting!_ mused the watching Timelord_. Clearly an electronic baffle of – aha, it's a programmable thin-film screen, held rigid by an electrical charge. No doubt it shows two hectares of barren plain when seen from above, and it must also shield against any electro-magnetic discharges. Plus, it's wide enough to conceal any purely physical activity close to the base – tracks or trails or landing-sites__. Rainfall would delineate the edges where water ran off, except that out here on the Nullarbor Plain there was no rain, or not until a certain asteroid fell from the heavens_.

Strange clumps of discoloured soil stood at a specific distance from the Lithoi's base, even if not arrayed in any kind of order. The Doctor puzzled over these for a minute and wonderied if they marked alien mining or horticulture, until he realised with a chill that the ashy mixture, washed into the plains, was the remains of countless animals that had blundered into range of the Lithoi.

None of the lizards were outside. Not surprising. The rainclouds had evapourated or blown further inland but the ground remained damp, wet enough to deter an aquaphobic lizard from moving around.

_I wonder where their ship is, _he continued_. Stubborn. Not willing to bale out and leave. Why can't they just accept the inevitable defeat, stop pitting their wits against me and fly off, chastened!_

He carefully parted the sedge stems hiding him and his canine accomplice, covering to the horizon

and back, twice. Puzzled, he frowned and thought.

No sign of an interstellar spacecraft, disguised or otherwise: no landing site, no hardstand, no launch gantry. The Lithoi couldn't have left their ship in orbit because then they'd have been easily able to destroy the arcologies, decades ago. There weren't any visible blast marks where a vessel might have landed or taken off, no stand-alone terminii to guide a starship to a landing or ascent. No aerials or antennae –

The phrase "hide in plain sight" suddenly stung him.

Of course the Lithoi ship didn't appear to be lurking around anywhere, because he could see it right in front of him. The ship was the base, and the base was the ship. The aliens had driven it into the surface of mother Earth like a screw into a block of wood, concealing most of the vehicle beneath the surface where it would be out of sight, protected from attack and free from airborne precipitation.

As his subconscious was wont to do, the Doctor felt surprised when a sneaky paradigm closely associated with the aliens use of their vessel ebbed into the forefront of his mind

_Sneaky_, he classified it. _Heavy metal_, he further classified it in light of how Ace thought of music.


	25. Chapter 26

INTERPOSIT FIVE

The Lithoi were angry; their plans were slipping out of control and that meant their Contract might not be honoured. Their last two flying eyes had been shockingly and unexpectedly destroyed in New Eucla. Yes, the artificers could build more but that would take time. Their sleeper agents, concealed in Transports, were being flushed out along the Australian coastline, and remorselessly killed. It had proved essential to order them back to the base, and they'd have to walk with no flying eyes to return them. Of all the fifty sleeper agents deployed, no more than ten or twelve might get back alive. If they could get past the dingo packs, that is, since the feral canines seemed to have an especial grudge against the Lithoi.

The loss of a few dozen from a crew of five hundred didn't matter especially, their concern was over how little control the Lithoi could now exert, thanks to their secrecy being breached.

Accordingly a panic session had been convened. Arkan 22, the nominal head of the Lithoi mission, spoke rapidly to the others.

'We have considered a cull of human survivors in the past, especially since their numbers in the Northern hemisphere began to increase. It is imperative that we implement a cull now!'

Miskan 54, the human expert, hissed in agreement.

'To delay would be dangerous. Without our covert control, surviving human colonies may become threatening.'

'An engineered plague, then,' decided Arkan 22. He slowly turned to look at the biological supervisor.

Nilkan 34 ducked his head, a Lithoi gesture of submission. In this case, apology.

'We would need to create it from scratch. None of the old cultures are viable after such a long delay from their first use.'

'Ensure it is more destructive than the last disease,' added Miskan 54. '_Much_ more.'

'Agreed,' added Arkan 22. Anger in a Lithoi didn't die down quickly. 'Inevitably some humans will survive. In the hundred years it will take for the Northern hemisphere to become completely viable, they will breed back up to the required level.'

Orskan 94 put in a technical objection.

'We do not have a delivery system any longer. The flying eyes spread the initial disease cultures.'

Arkan 22's tail thrashed in anger (to a Lithoi; to any other observer he merely twitched, slowly).

'Then the artificers will have to build more flying eyes! No rest for them.'

'I would also suggest a more short-term solution for the littoral communities,' added Mirkan 54. 'Missiles, with cobalt warheads. We cannot wait and allow them to interfere.'

'No!' hissed the leader. 'Cobalt pollutes excessively. Simple fission warheads will do.' He swivelled to look at Orskan 94. 'Have the artificers work on a dozen such missiles.'

Later that day, deep in the machine shops of the Lithoi's base, Orskan 94 hissed and seethed to himself. It was all very well Arkan 22 giving orders like "no rest" but in practice that meant unwilling shifts of the low-caste workers making mistakes thanks to exhaustion, very probably making things less successful than if they worked normally. And he was supposed to carry out both projects simultaneously! Which meant both went slowly, and doubtless Arkan 22 wouldn't like that, either.

Nilkan 34, having a higher caste status and a correspondingly higher position in the ship, had his concerns, too. He could cook up some frightful disease, certainly, and do it quicker than those lower caste spanner-wielders could build a flying eye, and that was the problem; they'd end up storing a deadly viral agent aboard their baseship.

Well, necessity made it so, he reasoned. They had done it before, with their original created disease, the one that humans called "The Phage". After all, there was simply no way humans could damage the baseship, even if they knew where it was ...

Arkan 22 had his own concerns. The panic meeting had been an unseemingly quick resolution to their problems, only eight hours long. Against that, nothing in the way of missiles or launch systems could be deployed outside until the plain had dried sufficiently because the low-caste workers would suffer terminal shock if they had to manoeuvre on ground that visibly contained water. Then there was the mysterious asteroid impact itself. It had occurred hundreds of kilometres south of them, nowhere near the base, so he felt right at having dismissed it as a natural occurence, despite what Miskan 54 might think.


	26. Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: Take A Chance With Me

The Doctor made his way back across the plains to New Eucla, with the dingo trotting behind him, seemingly now his best friend after he'd tossed it a couple of jelly babies, which had been devoured with a great deal of slobbering and chewing. Away to either side, occasionally visible in the gathering dark, a couple of other dingoes kept up with them. The Timelord reasoned he'd have trouble with this distant escort if his accomplice weren't present to warn them off.

Mike and Billy were sitting by a fire, outside the wrecked town, roasting a fish clad in clay. Mike's burns glistened with a slathered layer of goosefat that could be smelt even at a distance.

'Blood and sand! Doctor Smith! You're alive!' blurted Mike, jumping upright in surprise.

'Is that a dingo?'asked a worried Billy, more to the point and pointing, too

'An ally,' explained the Doctor. 'In future they may return to warn you if the Lithoi attempt to move out or attack.' The silent dingo stayed behind him, pressed against his legs.

'You can't trust 'em,' opined Mike. He got presented with a paper bag containing strangely-coloured and shaped objects.

'Jelly babies. Good for establishing trust.'

So saying, the Doctor pitched one at the lurking dingo, who snapped it up in mid-air and then vanished into the shadows.

'Still no time to explain?' gibed Mike.

'Time's running short as we speak. I know the Lithoi are planning some dreadful retribution and we have to act before they do – or everyone now alive will stop being so.'

The way the little man rolled his "r"s when he said "Dreadful retribution" would have sounded silly in another person. Mike didn't want any more details about what this dreadful thing might be.

And with that, the small traveller disappeared into the night, off to his strange blue box.

At the same time, three Americans dressed in camouflage fatigues were observing a delapidated shack on the outskirts of New Orleans, a city battered and depopulated even before the Big Crash. Most of the city's tiny population were concentrated towards the port area, and only the odd hermit, Wanderer or criminal lived on the outskirts.

The three were from the Carlsbad Crew and consisted of Colonel Boyce, Signals Specialist Werner and Boyce's ADC, Captain Mower. All three were armed, Boyce carrying an induction pistol and the two others with induction rifles; Mower also carried a hi-spec pair of digital binoculars that he watched the shack with.

'Definitely weird,' he muttered to the colonel. 'I can pick out the Chief on infra-red, but that other guy doesn't register at all.'

"That other guy" was apparently a voodoo priest, according to the two other district residents the soldiers had questioned earlier that day. Solitary and strange, the priest still had visitors who came to see him. And yeah, one of them was a soldier.

The Colonel's initial impulse when Washington called him was to snap angrily at the suggestion that an insider had carried out sabotage; as with the Veep, he'd later called his hasty response into question. Given that there had been sabotage, a suspicion he'd been careful never to actually state aloud, then – if this bizarre story of alien infiltrators was correct – the saboteur had to be someone who'd gone off-site, and on a regular basis.

That ruled himself out. He'd never been off the base. Werner and Mower hadn't been on leave for over a year. When he discreetly examined staff logs, one name stood out – Chief Engineer Murakow. The Chief regularly travelled to New Orleans where he'd had distant relatives long before the Big Crash. So, swearing the two other men to silence, he'd followed the engineer when he made his next trip.

Already he realised that the tall tale Veep Waukegan had spun wasn't so tall after all. Murakow hadn't ever mentioned visiting a voodoo priest on his leave, only ever historical sites or family residences, and that damn spooky witch doctor didn't show up on infra-red like a human being did.

'Right. We go in and take the spook down. Any resistance, any display of force, slot him.'

Boyce didn't mince words or euphemise. He hadn't explained exactly what the Veep had warned about, and the other soldiers might be expecting a Chinese spy.

They rushed the shack and Boyce, a hard and wiry officer, hit the crooked wooden door with his shoulder and ripped the door off it's hinges. It clattered noisily inside and the trio witnessed an unbelievable sight: Chief Murakow sitting – more accurately slumping – in a crude wooden chair, eyes wide, jaw slack, drool running down his chin. A wire headpiece sat on his scalp, the wiring running back to the voodoo priest's clawlike hands and a small device there. Most stunning of all was the giant gash in the priest's chest, easily a foot in diameter, and a giant snake's head poking out of the gap.

The snake slowly turned to face the men crowding into the doorway, as an incredulous Boyce levelled his pistol.

'Freeze!' he barked. The human head turned slowly towards the doorway as Mower used his rifle barrel to break the wire connected to the Chief's headset, and the seated man began to slowly regain consciousness.

An eye-bleaching bright flash suddenly came in the gloomy single-roomed shack and Mower let out a brief shout of agony before crumpling to the dusty boards. Boyce didn't hesitate and fired three times, knocking fist-sized holes in the creature, spraying blood and machine parts across the walls. Werner fired his rifle, shattering the priest's "head" apart completely and sending a volley of shrapnel everywhere. The body toppled over backwards and hit the floor hard, bouncing.

Boyce strode over and kicked the snake's head. He'd hit the creature lower down, almost severing it's body in two, and the head merely flopped limply. Pulling out his issue knife, he hacked away until he held a grisly trophy in his hand.

Turning back, he saw that Werner had retrieved Mower's gun and binoculars.

'Dead?' he asked. Werner nodded, before clearing his throat.

'Burnt a hole right through him, sir.' The younger soldier pointed at the supposed priest's body. 'What the hell was that thing, sir? And what was it doing to the Chief?'

Boyce kicked the wrecked artefact, now stinking of burnt plastic and a disgusting meaty smell reminiscent of bad cooking.

'This, Specialist, is our saboteur. And the Chief was it's tool.'

Ace had realised, finally, why the different buildings of Arcology One merely used a hanging drape instead of a rigid door. No weather to shut out. No theft, since any vanishing possessions would surely be detected instantly aboard the overcrowded sphere. No noise pollution to keep out. And a simple drape consumed a lot less resources than a big heavy door would.

Noise pollution? She sneered. That would have been interesting. Any noise at all was unusual. There were no motor vehicles, no broadcast stereo systems, no aircraft, no crowds of passers-by with an ambient conversation level.

She lay back on the wicker bed and contemplated the low-lit ceiling overhead, patterned with interlacing, interlocking shadows from multiple lights cast from the other cubicles. Tired and grubby after an eight-hour stint in the rice fields, she had earlier anticipated a hot shower.

'Water shower is a privilege only granted once a week,' the supervisor had chirped. Instead Ace got an ultrasonic booth that used a total of fifty millilitres of water and a broadcast pulse that gave her an appalling headache; no towels, either, only a giant air vent that directed warmed air tapped from the sphere's general circulation, directed downwards and which draped her hair unflatteringly over her shoulders.

Being one of the manual agricultural peons instead of a daring rocket-rider had a downside: the upside was that you would definitely live to see the next five minutes. The downside was that your bunk wasn't your own. "Hot-bunking" meant that in an environment starved of room you only had a bed or a bunk or a desk for eight hours a day, and that two other people would be using it when you were absent on a labour detail and you had better hope that they were hygeinic in a way that you understood –

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, as did those on her arms. What - ?

A flush of adrenaline kicked in, and Ace rolled out of her bunk to the floor below in the pose of a ninja. A startled and puzzled ninja.

'The TARDIS!' she yelped. 'Prof, I take it all back!'

She was out of her accomodation at Bedford before the timeship's strange metallic wheezing finished echoing over the hazy sphere interior.

When the Doctor walked to Broughton to catch any Founder scions he could, people stopped to stare at him in passing, pointing and whispering to each other. He politely tipped his hat to them: they weren't frowning or pursuing him, which made a change from some of his visits –

- Emilia was present, composing a message to send to the Americans. This wasn't easy, since it had to be done via signalling laser thanks to Lithoi jamming of the radio frequencies, and she tried to make the message as terse and thus easy to tap out as possible.

'Oh!' she gasped. 'You're back!'

'Rumours of my demise have been slightly exagerrated,' he said, a dry smile on his lips. 'Through fire and water and giant crocodile. Can you convene a meeting of your fellow Founders?'

Emilia sent the text to the astronomy section.

'Yes I can - what is it about?'

'Your future. No, I'm not going to be any more specific.'

Ace turned up within minutes, before all the available Founders could, visibly chafing to get involved in whatever he had planned. She explained about her mission in the now-damaged Pangolin, and Barclay's sacrifice.

'That wasn't really necessary,' commented the Timelord, sadly. Davy, looking more weary than ever, overheard as he settled slowly into a wicker chair.

'I don't think he wanted to come back, Doctor. He'd been responsible for the deaths of a great many colleagues. If it were me, I'd not like to live with my conscience.'

A dozen other scions arrived within twenty minutes. Clearly they were curious about the Doctor's return and his vague intent, and several whispered amongst themselves, speculating. Judging the moment to be right, the Doctor sat down on a table, propped his hands on his umbrella and began to address the audience.

'A few truisms first. Your colony in space needs to get back to Earth. Downstairs, as you call it. The first problem is that of location. Even in a benign environment like Australia, marginally affected by radioactive fallout, a micro-organism has emerged that is deadly to you, a people without any acquired resistance.'

Nods and murmurs of assurance from the audience.

'Therefore, you cannot set down anywhere else. Landing your crew in, say, the fields of the Ukraine would result in most of you dying from diseases far worse than that which came aboard from New Eucla.'

Before anyone could raise an objection, he carried on.

'The problem with attempting to land in Australia is that the Lithoi are already there, will consider any attempt to land as unwanted interference and will destroy you.'

More gloomy admissions, with a few puzzled faces about just what the Doctor was leading to?

'Your creation of the single-use Dart spaceplanes was admirable, truly admirable. However, even if the Lithoi disappeared it would take you decades to take your population Downstairs in such craft.'

Emilia looked up at him, sharply.

'We haven't got decades. We haven't got years, even.'

The Doctor beamed, incongruously.

'Quite! Nor could you return Downstairs with the artefacts and knowledge it took so long to store and maintain.'

'So it's hopeless!' came a sour comment. 'We're doomed.'

'Not at all!' carried on the Doctor, still smiling. 'We're going to get you Downstairs by de-orbiting the entire sphere.'

Standing with a bland smile, the Doctor took careful note of the initial disbelief, silence and then gradually increasing commotion about his show-stopping suggestion.

Ace looked at her mentor, noting the smug grin he showed at having caused such a commotion. From experience she knew he'd allow the confusion to carry on for a minute before stepping in to resolve it. Typical schemer!

'What!'

'Are you mad?'

'From doomed to impossible.'

'How on earth do you propose to do that!'

At that last sentence the Doctor's head whipped round to face the speaker, Christos. He levelled his umbrella like a rifle.

'That's the kind of comment I want to hear – "how?", not "it's impossible".'

'This is preposterous!' huffed Emilia. 'Arcology One is a fragile habitat, not a custom-built spaceship!'

The cold look she received made her quail a little. For a small and inoffensive man, the strange visitor could certainly manage to be imposing when he chose to –

'Madam, you are talking to a man who routinely reverses the polarity of neutron flux.'

'Neutrons don't _have_ polarity,' said a puzzled Liam Schottsky.

'Exactly!' crowed the Doctor. 'Believe me, refitting the sphere won't be easy, but it can be done.'

'Refit with what?' asked Christos. By now he felt semi-persuaded that this remarkable stranger could manage to get the Branson Mansion down on _terra firma_ if he claimed to be able.

'Glad you asked. Emilia?'

The descendent of the sphere's original founder looked flustered.

'Do you mean mine for metals on the Moon? That would take years!'

A patronising smile, a purse of the lips and the Doctor shook his head. He glanced at Ace, who wondered herself what building materials might be lying around.

_I mean, this is outer space, it's not like construction kit is simply lying around waiting to be – oh! Hang on, hang on – I see! This lot don't realise because it's been part of their background for sixty years._

'The Prof means those two incomplete space habitats, the Indian and South American ones that never got completed before the Big Crash.'

A chorus of ooh's and aah's went up from the listeners. Emilia jerked back as if slapped.

'Of course! Of course, there's hundreds of tons of material there. Oh, why didn't I think of that. And, unlike Eden, it's all separate and doesn't need to be broken up first.' She paused. 'There's still atmospheric re-entry, Doctor. That will take more than structural reinforcement to survive.'

Ace cocked her head to one side and tried to remember her off-the-cuff and on-the-job experiences of re-entry. You needed a heat-shield, either a physical one or a force-field, and Arc One had neither.

'You need a heat-shield, and I had intended that Pangolin be used for that. My idea is to use lunarkrete, moulded into blocks about a metre thick and secured against the sphere's exterior. Lunarkrete made either in situ or on the Moon and ferried up here.'

This time there were no sounds; the listeners were too surprised to express surprise. The Doctor carried on.

'With Pangolin out of commission I suppose we'll have to plead our case to the Americans and see if we can use M3 or their spare shuttle. Tut! That's a bit of a nuisance.'

Davy spoke up.

'We're the American's favourite people at present, Doctor Smith. You too. Thanks to our warnings they tracked down the saboteur at Camp Carlsbad. I think they'll co-operate.'

'Oh good!' beamed the Doctor. 'Now, how good are you at knitting?'

Happily for the Doctor, Arc One and indeed the entire human race, M3 had been put into mothballs for the foreseeable future as there didn't seem to be any great use for the skyscraper-sized rocket and towed environment.


	27. Chapter 28

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO: Sunset

Things were progressing well. The Americans had agreed to "loan-out" M3 as a shuttle service for as long as The Doctor needed it. That meant the giant spacecraft could be used to ferry and collect the several thousand tonnes of construction materials still orbiting from those incomplete spheres whilst the Doctor explained what needed to be done to Arc One. As he put it, using the materials that happened to be floating around was far easier than dismantling the skeleton of Eden.

What remained to be done? A lot!

His other worry came back to him, that the Lithoi were plotting to carry out another biological warfare attack and that they'd manage that sooner than the sphere could be de-orbited. In fact they were almost guaranteed to win the race. So a spanner needed to be inserted into their works.

He called Ace over, from where she'd been studying a battered laptop (the only type aboard Arc One) scrolling through details of the sphere's construction. Other technical staff were sitting around other laptops, working out what they could manage with the structural steel girders and plating that M3 was towing their way.

'This is pretty heavy-duty stuff, Prof. Are you sure it can be done?'

'Ace!' he chided. 'I spent two whole days analysing these blueprints and what we have to work with. Yes, it can be done.'

She eyed him suspiciously. He hadn't spent two days away from anywhere – ah, except his jaunt in the TARDIS; he could have had time stand still for himself in that blue box of tricks.

'Yeah, rightttt. Industrial-scale welding and riveting and adhering and cutting, all good stuff. I can't wait to get started.'

The Doctor cleared his throat and balanced on his tiptoes.

'Ah, yes, about that. What I worry about is that the Lithoi will make their move first whilst we prepare the sphere.'

He let Ace stew a bit over that.

'And that would be bad, right, Prof?'

'Yessss. Tactical nuclear missiles, The Phage re-written, a million flying eyes with a million thermal lances. And there is an unavoidable schedule to be followed up here, Upstairs, that delays us for days if not weeks.'

'Then – we need to stop them!'

He looked at her with a wry smile.

'Yes. Yes, we do. Unfortunately the people Downstairs have absolutely no idea what they are dealing with. The people Upstairs who might help would need at least forty-eight hours to acclimatise to a non-spherical environment, and that much time again to acquire a tolerance to terrestrial micro-organisms.'

Ace bit the bullet. It stood right in front of her, after all.

'I could go Downstairs. I'm okay with a sphere or the land as it lies. I'm immune to bugs and diseases. Plus, I know all about blowing things up.'

He stood in front of her, beaming, clapping her on the biceps with obvious pride.

'Ace! Dorothy! I'm so proud!' He toned down the emotion. 'Ah, that is, I thoroughly approve of your entirely voluntary decision.'

She cocked an eyebrow at his hamming, before laughing herself. Then, catching sight of the big North End Airlock being opened to allow a batch of girders inside, she whistled as the sheer mass of retrieved tonnage became apparent. One question at the back of her mind was answered: you couldn't build a shuttle from components big enough to outfit an ocean-going liner. The Doctor's attention was focussed instead on a gaggle of Wardens that drew closer until he could make out an unfamiliar boilersuited figure they were escorting.

_Not a boilersuit, military fatigues. Interesting! Who could this be – oh, I see. We get M3 and a babysitter comes attached with it, too_.

'This is Captain Kirwin,' announced one of the Wardens. 'From Washington.'

The officer was a tall, rangy female who stood to attention and threw a smart salute at the Doctor, who blinked and looked nonplussed.

'I've been sent by personal instruction of the Vice President, Doctor Smith. He's been over the historical records and wants to assure everyone that we protect you from any alien threat.'

Two of the escorting Wardens dropped a big valise to the ground, and a bulky metal case followed it, both overlaid with stencilled abbreviations and having an unmistakable military air. The Doctor's gaze dwelt briefly on each in turn.

'How thoroughly splendid!' he smiled, a touch of acid in his tone. 'But as I don't intend to venture within reach of any aliens, a touch irrelevant.'

Ace's inspection of the officer's kit took longer than the Doctor's, due to her speculation on exactly what military mischief might be contained therein.

'You see, I need to help supervise the internal cross-bracing, the hull rib reinforcement, the transparency sealing, water stowage, fusion plant run-down – a whole host of things,' continued the Timelord.

'Prof,' interrupted Ace. 'We could use another pair of eyes Downstairs.'

His sidelong glance told her that he knew exactly what she was getting at, that is to say, getting her hands on the hi-tec weapons that Captain Kirwin was lugging along.

_Mind you, if the captain did accompany Ace it would get these weapons off the sphere, where a single accident could imperil the whole structure and entire population_.

'Oh, couldn't do that, Ace. Diseases, you know.'

Captain Kirwin rolled back her left sleeve to show a flexible metallic disk attached to her inner forearm.

'Bio-booster, Doctor Smith. I'll be immune to any disease for at least ten days.'

This earned her a frown; bio-boosters were dangerous. A person could go into metabolic anaphylaxis if using them – unless they were rigourously fit and healthy.

'You would be more useful Downstairs, Captain, than getting under my feet in Arc One. We need to have eyes on the Lithoi's base.'

The Captain's expression brightened, before she caught herself and resumed the poker face. Patently, she wanted to get Downstairs and lay eyes on the Lithoi.

'I'll give you a lift Downstairs,' explained the Doctor, hurrying Ace and Kirwin along. 'First stop Adelaide and I have a list of shopping we need to get.'

Such a request struck Kirwin as strange; Ace was more used to these apparent whims and understood there was a reason for it. They might get an explanation, or the Doctor might silently remain amused at his own cleverness.

'Is – ah, that "TARDIS"?' asked Kirwin when they got within view of the timeship.

' "_The_" TARDIS,' clarified Ace, mischievously. 'He gets a bit precious if you don't treat it with respect.'

'Ace!' scolded the Doctor, proving her point perfectly. 'My frankly amazing time- and space-travelling machine, on – er – long-term loan.'

The American looked uncertainly at the impassive police box, which had attracted the normal attendant audience of small children.

'And you can go all over the universe in it?'

'Yes!' declared the Doctor, proudly. He stuck a thumb in each lapel. 'Only in the Local Group of late, mind you. This genteel lady needs a trillion-mile overhaul before we venture further,' and he patted the blue "wooden" exterior affectionately.

Once inside the woman gawped silently at the interior, forgetting to lower her valise and case until her arms began to ache, starting when the central time rotor wheezed into action.

'The list,' trilled the Doctor, giving one pencilled note to each passenger. 'We'll split up, scavenge what we can and meet back at the TARDIS in an hour.'

The time rotor bottomed out with it's usual enervated thump. Overhead the central monitor screen showed a barren and delapidated roadway with great patches and swathes of weeds and grasses thrusting up amongst the craggy and battered tarmac. Kirwin hung back when the doors opened, pale of face and swallowing nervously.

'I suggest you retrieve a helmet from your bag and put it on, Captain. It helps you to adjust a little quicker,' said the Doctor. Ace recognised all the symptoms that Alex experienced days ago.

'D'you think we'll find any of this stuff?' she asked.

'Do your best. A party and novelty shop would be a good start.'

Captain Kirwin, now with a stern expression, a gently quivering lower lip and a helmet seated firmly on her head, came striding out into the warmth of an Adelaide afternoon.

'Wow,' she whispered.

Checking his half-hunter, the Doctor waved his umbrella majestically.

'Back here in sixty minutes! Captain, these buildings are derelict and in peril of collapse. Do be careful.'

The Doctor's recommendation about a party supplies shop had been wise, reflected Ace. Looting, panic buying or forcible government requisition might very well affect supermarkets, or hardware shops, or a hundred and one other types of business – but an inessential purveyor of fripperies would be left undisturbed. Thus "Dais 's D lgh s", as the sign almost said, yielded up the candles, plastic cups, foil and balloons from her list, plus a couple of items she might need in an emergency. Captain Kirwin had found tea-lights, no balloons but a stack of partly-perished black bin-liners, and the Doctor came jangling back with armfuls of coathangers.

'What's all this for?' asked Kirwin, grubby and still amazed at how enormous planet Earth was when you were down on it's surface. Not only that, there were frightening arthropods here that were big enough to carry off small children – she'd disturbed several in her quest.

The Doctor winked at her.

'People on Arc One have refrained from asking what the Lithoi are going to do when the sphere descends. Nothing good, I expect. So this bric-a-brac will go together to create an electromagnetic distraction to keep them busy.'

Both women stared at the collection of junk before being bustled inside the TARDIS, where the Doctor hastily piloted it into the ether again. Once again Kirwin was non-plussed by the short duration and the different scene displayed on the scanner screen when the brief journey ended.

'Ace – you have your radio? Good. Now, I must return to Arc One to provide indispensable help and advice, whilst you two hike out to a viewing position in the Nullarbor Plain. Whatever you do STAY CLEAR of the Lithoi base!'

Kirwin witnessed the big blue box vanish into thin air, leaving behind a ghostly echo sounding like the heartstrings of the universe being given a good shaking, and felt shaken herself. The American's historical datacore didn't explain explicitly how TARDIS worked, despite the CIA having it's hands on a copy back in the Seventies. Matter transmission? Teleportation? Magic?

She turned to look around. The pair stood on a low sandy hill towards dusk, with scrubby battered trees and bushes to their rear, beyond which a strange rushing noise came. Before them stretched the mostly-wrecked township of New Eucla, and a damp trail led from beach to town.

Ace led her down, along the muddy trail and between buildings wracked or sullied by mud and flotsam. The odd dead fish lay festering in the gutters and a breeze made trembling buildings quiver and fall, carrying a vile smell reminiscent of rotten meat.

'What a mess!' ventured Ace. 'They really turned the turf over here.' She caught Kirwin's puzzled glance. 'The rock we dropped from orbit into the ocean hit this place with a miniature tidal wave.'

Many buildings exhibited signs of blast damage, caused by the Lithoi flying eyes. Kirwin made a short detour to examine the carcass of one flying eye, kicking it over with her foot and seeing rainwater dribble out from the broken seams.

Two streets further on they came across the airborne stink's source: the rotting body of a gigantic crocodile, swathed in layers of flies. Both women kept a respectable distance. Being a product of a controlled-environment that lacked such disgusting chaos, the captain decided that Earth had a few flaws to it.

By this time sunset had begun. The growing darkness allowed the flames of a small fire to stand out on the road at the edge of New Eucla and bring into relief a scattering of tents and tethered horses that centred around the stone-circled flames.

'Hoi!' came a hoarse shout. 'You there!' and red firelight glinted on the barrel of a shotgun.

'Sorry about that,' explained the sentry. 'We didn't expect anyone else from the Stars to come down. Was it Doctor Smith and his big blue box of tricks that brought you here?'

Gnawing at salted, barbecued crocodile steak, Ace nodded. There were at least a dozen people in the camp, a couple of them Euclans, the rest members of the South Australia Police who had come to investigate what on earth was happening off the Eyre Highway. News of the Lithoi had spread far beyond the coastal communities thanks to the efficient courier network; not a few of the sinsister alien lizards had been detected in their human-shaped disguises and killed.

'The Doctor won't like that,' frowned Ace. 'Not big on killing, you know.'

'More like "committed suicide",' explained the SAP on sentry-duty. 'Or "remote-control killed". We don't think their bosses like them being taken alive.'

More questions followed from both sides, with the big news being that Arc One was going to be de-orbited. This evoked only slight interest from the locals. Kirwin felt herself getting annoyed that such a dangerous and large-scale project should be treated so lightly. Didn't they realise how – which is when she realised that no, the locals didn't understand just what was involved.

'We want to get out to spy on the Lithoi base,' explained Ace after tucking away another croc steak.

'Not a chance!' snorted one of the policemen. 'At least not in the dark, without knowing the land.'

Biting her tongue, Ace avoided replying. The plod did have a point; their directions from the Doctor were sketchy to say the least, about orienting themselves at the outskirts of the town and heading in that direction for at least a day.

'What's in your cases?' asked another policeman, making Kirwin look up from her own crocodile steak.

'Induction rifles, induction pistols, ammunition and a portable FAF missile launcher with three warheads.'

Ace understood "FAF" immediately. She had to explain to the Australians.

'It's "Fire and Forget". You point the missile at a target, launch it and then scarper, and the missile finds it's own way there.'

Dark looks from those assembled:

'Is it nuclear?' asked several.

'No. High explosive squash head,' said Kirwin sharply, and Ace had to explain that as well. After which she yawned jaw-crackingly widely and settled down against a handy tree stump to rest – and inevitably fell asleep.

Half-dozing, she heard a chorus of whistles and shouts from the Australians.

'Can't a girl catch forty winks round here?' she grumbled. Behind the hoots and catcalls a less human sound caught her ears, that of a receding crash, as of debris falling in New Eucla. Except it carried on into the distance. The sound came again and again, eventually forcing her to open her eyes and she witnessed Captain Kirwin demonstrating the finer points of an induction rifle to suitably appreciative policemen.

'Only limited by the curve of the horizon. If you can see it, you can hit it,' proudly announced the officer. Another policeman gingerly took one of the big-barrelled rifles under Kirwin's watchful eye, held it to his shoulder and pressed the firing stud. A hyper-velocity projectile blasted through the ruins of New Eucla, leaving a faint white trail of superheated air.

Silent and recoilless, noted Ace with interest. But not good in a confined space!

Curiosity prodded her to her feet, which was fortunate. From her perspective she could see behind the clustered policemen and the flames of the campfire, and a dancing dog.

Wait a minute - a dancing _dog_?

No, a dingo. The creature danced forward into the firelight, then dodged out again, trying to attract attention without barking.

Pausing to pick up the remains of a well-gnawed crocodile bone, Ace detoured around the party of shooters and towards the dingo. The animal danced forward and backward, plainly impatient yet not daring to venture too close to the armed humans. This reticence stopped when Ace threw it the bone; the dingo stopped dead, sniffed closely then slunk forward to snap up the offered morsel before cracking it between it's teeth and slobbering over the marrow inside.

Ace backed up to the group around the campfire.

'Does anyone have a pet dingo?' she asked. A few puzzled glances were shot her way before the group clustered back around the futuristic weapons.

'Because there's one trying to get our attention,' continued Ace, to a lack of interest. She was about to announce the arrival of Lady Godiva mounted naked on a Dilly to get their attention when an angry Mike turned up. His burns were less fierce than they had been but he still looked slightly kippered, although his colouring might have been due to anger. His first sentences consisted entirely of swearing, with Ace taking careful note of the colourful argot, before he got down to business.

'Which galah's responsible for smashing up the town even more! People have to come back here to live, you know, and you woke me up with your noise - '

'Dingo. Dancing. Over there,' interrupted Ace as loudly as possible, pointing. A collective gasp went up, bar Mike, who made an "Oh!" of surprise before rooting around in a pocket.

'Don't shoot it, you drongos!' he snapped, throwing a small dark object at the dingo, which snapped it up with relish. Ace recognised a jelly-baby, doubtless from the Prof's personal stash.

Mike came over to stand by Ace.

'It's that pack leader the Doctor brought back. What's he want?'

The dingo, emboldened, came slowly forward, gently took the trim of Ace's boilersuit in it's teeth and tugged at her.

'I think he likes you,' joked one of the Australians.

'I think he wants you to follow him,' voiced Kirwin. 'Let me get a rifle and we'll follow. No!' she added, turning to see several of her audience getting ready, too. 'Ace and me alone. The smallest group possible.'

She picked up a rucksack and hefted another one at Ace.

'Are you Mike Velic?' she asked, to a nod from Mike. 'The Mayor. Okay Mayor, I'm leaving these weapons in your charge.'

With that, the threesome of humans and dingo set off.


	28. Chapter 29

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE: Remake/Re-Model

If time aboard Arc One was in short supply, then labour was not. Two thousand people at any one time could be deployed to carry out whatever manual tasks were deemed essential, and thanks to the Doctor's insisting to the Founder's scions that his current plans were all-or-nothing, those two thousand were currently working, hard.

First, the girders retreived by MEV needed to get up to sphere temperature or risk deformation, even shattering, when they were worked over by the crew. This depended upon how thick the girder was as they came in three different sizes. Metal sheeting took relatively little time to adjust and the relay team working on the sphere's exterior had already covered a handful of the transparent panels.

It seemed that wherever an observer stood, a team of volunteers were hard at work within eyeshot. Those busy welding carefully-curved support struts onto the sphere's original support beams could be smelt from a distance, too, thanks to the bitter metallic fumes generated.

Busiest of all were the six teams tasked with erecting three axial struts, each of which consituted two separate half-units connected by a middle unit that looked like a die manufactured from steel and rubber. Each strut measured two hundred and fifty metres in length and had been created by welding multiple sets of three girders around a central girder that projected a metre beyond those three surrounding it. This created a cavity that the girder set below could plug into.

The plan was to create three half-struts, two lying flat on the sphere's surface with the last one projecting vertically from the crux. The two horizontal struts would each be bedded-in at an attachment point and the construct would be hauled upright on cables to mate with the other set of half-struts, with the vertical struts bedding-in at two other attachment points on the hull. In this way the half-struts would be cushioned against compression by their attachment points – metre-thick layers of dense plastics and steel sandwich – and the central "die", again a composite of compressible metal, rubber and plastics.

A fair amount of damage had already been caused by two failed attempts at hauling the struts upright; this third attempt was testing the tempers, patience and peace of mind of everyone involved, including the Doctor. After the last failure, half a metre had to be torched from a strut to ensure the six components met at exactly the correct angle.

Not too bad, mused the watching Timelord. Better too long than too short.

Co-ordinating their hauling teams by Tab and visuals across the sphere allowed the Wardens to fine-tune this attempt. Distance killed the sound, but the Doctor swore he heard metal grate against metal as the unwieldy structure finally lodged itself together.

Removing his boater, he wiped sweat from his brow.

'Anxious stuff, eh?' commented a stranger watching amongst a group of spectators. The Doctor favoured him with a frosty look.

'Please! The mathematics and physics are incontrovertible. It's simply a matter of putting them into practice.' He checked his half-hunter. 'As rapidly as possible.'

With the internal bracing erect, that left the numerous busy teams attaching additional supports to the sphere's original girder skeleton, which meant removing a considerable amount of landscape overlying the girders; Arc One was rapidly resembling a giant construction site.

Nor was that all. Not nearly! No, there was a line of workers busily creating lunarkrete modular blocks, each a metre square and half a metre thick. This served two purposes, since it not only created components for the heat-shield, but also consumed water, which would otherwise have to be pumped back into storage tanks – and there wasn't enough space to accomodate the sphere's entire holdings of water. Nobody had ever seen the need for that in the design, even when there were only ten thousand inhabitants. Another works team were out on the hull exterior, welding support rods to it, where the blocks would be tethered in a triple layer.

Spread out across the entire sphere, not visible because they worked indoors, still more workers were "knitting" titanium wire into giant sheets, after their colleagues put salvaged sphere material through a pulling press to produce kilometres of five-millimetre metal thread. Slow work, but important.

Warning lights at the North airlock indicated that M3's MEV had arrived from the Moon with another load of regolith, five hundred tonnes for processing split into ten individual blivets.

Excellent! mused the Doctor, rocking back on his heels, thumbs in lapels. Feeling like a project manager and unused to operating at a distance from his own ideas, he decided to visit Broughton and see what progress the scions had made towards the sphere's eventual landing. His progress took twice as long as it should, thanks to detours around welding teams working in trenches everywhere.

The township's central house buzzed with activity; charts and screens arrayed on tables indicated pie charts and graphics dealing with this unique operation. He peered over the shoulder of a young woman inputting data from her Tab, seeing the legend "% Loose Artefacts Rendered Safe", and a series of coloured bars with headings like "Personal Effects" "Livestock" "Storage".

'How's it going' he interrupted.

Startled, the lady looked up at him.

'Not bad. A bit of delay until we mix up another batch of cyano-acrylate. Overall up to fifty-nine percent.'

Emilia caught sight of him and came across, threading her way between tables and staff.

'Doctor! I'm beginning to think this might actually succeed. You didn't persuade me before, but now I think you could be right.' She checked a clipboard. 'One problem was going to be water in microgravity. The lunarkrete takes care of the excess, so there won't be a problem when we run down the fusion plant.'

'No rotation and running on batteries,eh?'

She shrugged.

'It won't be for long.'

Just as he opened his mouth to explain exactly how long, his pocket radio buzzed. Ace calling.

'Yes, hello?' he began.

'Hi, Prof, we've got problems down here. Our unwanted guests are putting up what Captain Kirwin swears is a missile launch platform.'

Snapping his fingers and quoting a Gallifreyan vulgarism, the Doctor frowned mightily. Ace described alien lizards that killed themselves thanks to getting wet or muddy, and he realised that the Lithoi were moving with desperate haste, racing to complete their missile platform before the ground had dried properly. Perhaps "racing" wasn't entirely accurate, given their sluggish metabolism.

'The Captain wants to - ' began Ace before getting cut off.

'NO!' barked the Doctor. 'No nonsense about shooting or missiles. You might very well destroy the launcher, but you will absolutely _certainly_ be killed yourselves.'

Pursing his lips, he realised his pre-emptive trickery for the sphere's final descent needed to be wheeled out now.

'Ace, you and the captain need to return to New Eucla and that kit we picked up in Adelaide. It needs to be used as soon as you can manage.'

'Righto!' agreed the young woman, cheerily. 'Are you staying out of trouble up there?'

'No,' replied the Doctor. 'After my flyswatter, I need to work on a hammer.'

En route to what the humans presumed must be the alien's base, the trio of Ace, Kirwin and dingo travelled well during darkness, ironically, because when daylight came the American became very disoriented and her pace slowed.

'It's the sky,' she muttered when Ace asked what was the matter. 'There's just so _much_ of it.'

'Put your helmet back on,' suggested the young woman. Kirwin did and felt slightly less confused, though her head felt horribly sweaty as the sun rose.

'How hot does it get? It must be at least sixty degrees already,' she asked shortly before noon.

Taking pity on her, Ace stopped them for a couple of hours whilst they swigged a bottle of water each and their dingo escort panted in the shadows. Ace then had to explain about wind, and why shadows moved over time, and what dust was.

Eventually they moved off, dingo leading. It took the rest of the day to reach what the Captain called a "lying-up" position; a suitable shallow dip in the ground with enough cover from scrubby sedge to conceal them from inquisitive eyes. At this distance the Lithoi base could only be seen via binoculars, and the captain had an impressive high-tec digital pair that she let Ace look through. Not only that, she produced a small telescopic tripod from her rucksack and set the binoculars up on them.

'It'll keep our view steady and focussed,' she said. 'You take a look. This is all new to me!'

Ace peered into the unfamiliar instrument, seeing the distant landscape overlaid with a glowing green grid, and flickering numbers that indicated distance.

The wavering image came into focus, revealing a giant grey mushroom humping up over the plains, concealed by a vast plastic cover. Slinking silver shapes moving painfully slowly proved to be the Lithoi, covered against Earth's weather, moving to and around a spindly metal construction being erected out beyond the canopy that overlaid their base. Small motorised tractors also helped shift materials from a cavernous doorway in the base, moving as slowly as the alien lizards.

Rather than work on the platform themselves, the aliens allowed their tractors to do the manual handling, carrying, laying and slotting metal components together. One tractor slowly skirted the hexagonal platform, putting up tall plastic poles at each corner, until another concealing plastic canopy could be hauled over them.

Kirwin took over observation, in time to see one of the Lithoi tugging at a corner of the plastic cover over the platform; a stream of mud or water came dripping off the shroud from where it had been lying on damp ground and played all over the alien, which went rigid before keeling over. Only when another Lithoi used a tractor to haul the limp body away did Kirwin realise the paralysed lizard had died of shock brought on by exposure to water.

Within an hour Ace witnessed two more Lithoi casualties; one, splashed by a tractor, went berserk and danced around in writhing circles before a cluster of other aliens lasered it apart. The second lasered itself apart after crawling into a shallow puddle concealed by the platform's shadow.

'They really, really can't stand water,' she murmured to Kirwin. 'Listen, I'd better call the Doctor. He'll need to know about what they're building.'

At that point Kirwin decided that the platform constituted a launch site for missiles.

'Gotta be,' she said to Ace and dingo. To Ace it looked like an inverted wire basket, with cabling, but she passed on the warning to her travelling companion, who sternly forbade them to carry out anything dramatic and in fact to head back to New Eucla and his collection of party favours.

The trio waited until dark before heading back, their dingo escort happy to lead them for an occasional reward of jelly-baby. They finally arrived at the township's outskirts near mid-day, tired, dirty, dusty and thirsty. Kirwin had lost her slight stoop of the day before, and had gained an appreciation of how big her new home was.

'Back on Washington you're never more that six minutes walk from anywhere else. Down here – I mean, we've been walking for hours!'

Standing sentry over the embers of a dying bonfire were three South Australian Police and a couple of couriers, all swapping tales of the incredible events taking place across the Bight. A football-sized lump of clay had been rolled out of the fire, and one of the couriers was preparing to batter it apart when he caught sight of the approaching threesome.

'Hey now!' he blurted. 'Here's trouble.'

'That's Doctor Smith?' asked a courier, nodding at Captain Kirwin. One of the SAP gave him a good-natured cuff over the head.

'You nork! That's the Yank, from Upstairs. The other beaut is Ace. Doctor Smith has an umbrella, like I said.'

'Plus a pet dingo,' observed another courier. Ace slapped herself across the forehead. Typical! She'd forgotten the really important thing.

'Listen,' she told the dingo. 'Get your pack away from that – that – from those lizards.'

The dingo barked enthusiastically, pawing at the dry earth.

'I mean it!' emphasised Ace. 'That place is going to get blammed, major league blammed if I know the Prof.'

The American saw what others might have missed. She did, after all, regard dingoes as a novelty to be closely studied. The creature's "pawing" in the dust had created a wavy outline sprouting short sticklike appendages.

'Ace!' she gasped, gripping the other woman's upper bicep like a pincer. 'That damn dog has drawn one of the aliens!'

Ten seconds of surprise later, Ace scraped a picture of the Lithoi base, then a dingo next to it. She then scuffed that out, to show a running dingo, then scuffed that out in turn to walk a good ten metres away and draw a sitting dingo – her artistic skills not being the best, she had to cross fingers and hope. Their dingo audience looked closely at each sketch, then yelped a peculiar rippling, multi-tonal call and raced off. The Australians looked after it with both worry and wonder.

'Abstract thought. They'll be talking, next,' commented one courier.

'Nah. Don't have the larynx for it,' said Ace. 'Their great-great grandchildren, mind, they're another story altogether.'

They had to rest after their long trek to and from the desert plains; rest, drink lots of water and scrounge a meal from The Sanctuary. There they also had to deal with curious strangers, new arrivals who stood out starkly thanks to the deserted condition of the township: more couriers from both Southern Australia and Western Australia had arrived to source truth from the incredible rumours making their way across the continent. One man had even arrived from New South Wales, bearing tidings of strange mutilated human corpses that lacked blood or internal organs.

To Ace, this tide of human curiosity meant that the Lithoi had lost control of the information war already. Hence that missile platform must be meant to deal with the newly-informed and critically-aware humans. Captain Kirwin also understood this, if a little less clearly than Ace.

'These people here could help us with the balloons,' she whispered to her companion.

Ace took stock. There were seven couriers sitting down to eat. A couple might be persuaded to help with her mentor's bizarre decoy strategy. Downing a salted crocodile steak, she stood up.

'G'day!' she breezed, trying for light and amusing.

Silence was her response.

'Ah – yeah. Right. The Captain and I are going to be trying to distract the lizards with a collection of balloons whilst Doctor Smith sets about sabotaging their missile platform.'

More silence.

'Balloons made from bits of coathanger and foil and bin-liner. Decoys, you see.'

Still silence.

'So the Captain and I were wondering if any of you fancied helping us make them.'

She cleared her throat in embarassment and sat down in a hurry.

'Sure. Why not?' drawled one of the nut-brown travelling horsemen, to a chorus of approval.

After recovering their trove of salvaged bits and pieces from an abandoned house, Kirwin popped a flare and watched where the wind took the smoke. After that, the nine set to on a makeshift production line: straighten out the coat hangers; twist one around the other and create a cross with arms at right angles; insert a bin-liner inside another and those two inside another (guarding against perished plastics); partially melt the bases of forty candles one after the other and affix them to the coat-hanger cross; insert the coat-hanger at the neck of the bin-liners; re-inforce the neck of the bin-liner; glue a plastic cup to the crux of the coat-hangers; cut up foil decorations into five-, ten- and fifteen-centimetre lengths; fill the cup with the cut foil.

Ace radioed the Doctor before beginning their mischief.

'We're about ready to – what should we call it? Begin Balloonaticking.'

'Splendid!' he purred. 'In the nick of time.'


	29. Chapter 30

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR: Eight Miles High

Silence.

(Deep breathing)

Stars.

(Check suit Life Support tell-tales)

Space.

(A vista of curved metal to the horizon)

Yet not darkness. Earthlight, moonlight and sunlight all helped to ensure that the stark and awesome vista of Arc One in orbit didn't suffer from a lack of illumination.

The Doctor plodded on. His battered spacesuit came from the arcology's supplies rather than one of his own, since this way was quicker, and time mattered considerably here.

Aha! Dart Three. The slender delta shuttle looked almost close enough to touch, an illusion caused by lack of air and consequent lack of atmospheric distortion. He finally clambered aboard a minute later.

Already familiar thanks to Ace's debriefing, the Doctor dragged his wire bundle of miscellaneous machine parts over to the crew cockpit, a spartan cubby-hole with little but the most elementary steering controls. This crudity was helpful, since a more sophisticated guidance interface would have created problems thanks to timing and how long he'd have needed to overcome it.

First of all, he cemented four webcameras at corners of the Lexan windows, oriented to point outwards into space. Next, he took a child's construction set and created a robust framework that encompassed all the shuttlecraft's controls, before seating a power module at the centre of the structure, and attaching a radio remote-control to the power module. Fiddling with the remote caused different pistons or levers to rise or fall, which the Doctor greeted with gleeful delight. There'd be lag time, of course, he couldn't hep that, just cross his fingers that it wasn't too long. His final act was to add a touch of TARDIS electrotechnical wizardry to the remote-control mechanism. Just in case.

When he backed out of Dart Three, he saw that the MEV crew were still lumping their great slack blivets of lunar regolith from M3 onto trollies and into the great airlock. That gave him an idea – two, actually – and he trotted across the curving metal horizon to the diligent American crew working away on their trans-shipment.

'I say, can you spare me one or two of those sachets?' he directed at one of the crew, a crewmember who wore a spacesuit stippled with badges of rank, seniority and OSWALD on both breastplate and shoulders. The American turned round from inspecting a transport-trolly, casting about until picking out the Doctor in his suit headlights.

'Who d'you think you are!' snapped the American, their annoyed twang coming across especially well on the radio link. 'The Snargroid of Trexlox?'

'The Snargroid is a lot less problematical since his kingdom became a constitutional monarchy. All I want are blivets to the mass of fifty metric tonnes, which I personally will haul to Dart Three. Deal?'

It was impossible to see the American's face through the one-way visor.

'Who the hell are you to ask!' snapped their voice over the link.

'Doctor John Smith,' declared the Doctor, mock-meekly, waiting for the consequences. The huge space-suited American turned to face other similarly-suited astronauts, which meant they were checking on his credentials and lineage. An inaudible conversation occured for perhaps twenty seconds.

Abruptly the space-suit whirled back round on one heel, a manouevre that risked losing contact with the hull.

'Sir!' barked the American, all trace of reluctance gone. 'Why didn't you state who you were first! Amersham, Condretti, Malbeuge – separate off fifty blivets for the Doctor, carry off to Dart Three, action immediate.'

The huge suited figure pointed at three other equally-huge spacesuits, who cranked up their right arms in salute and began to offload silvery blivets. After that it took mere minutes to stuff the containers into Dart Three.

'Thank you so much!' beamed the Doctor, putting all the sincerity he could muster into his voice. The three enormous suited figures stomped back to M3 and the daisy-chain passing blivets of regolith into Arc One's major airlock. The Doctor clambered back into Dart Three and burst all the blivets with his sonic screwdriver, ending up almost knee-deep in lunar dust. After that he trudged back to the TARDIS, doffing the arcology space-suit en route. A quick check overhead showed that the dew-pond he'd first sat by decades ago still held water. Good!

Passing sphere inhabitants were no longer awed when the blue police box appeared or disappeared; all the same, they were surprised to see it appear, for the briefest of moments, atop the still waters of a collection pond, snapping the membrane over it, before vanishing again, taking all the water with it.

No spectators witnessed the TARDIS materialising within the passenger space of Dart Three, carrying thirty tonnes of water with it, before vanishing again. The water, still at room temperature, violently reacted with the freezing lunar regolith before the resulting slurry gradually froze into immobility.

'So – you intend to fly this thing into the alien's base?' enquired Captain Oswald. He had been the wearer of that first American spacesuit and curiosity, not to mention standing orders concerning Doctor John Smith, led him to track the small man down.

Sphere residents – he didn't know if they were "crew" or "passengers" or simply "tenants" – had pointed him to a township overhead called Broughton. There were at least a hundred people hard at work when he got there, all trying to sort out exactly what to do in order to de-orbit Arcology One, he guessed. A stand had been erected on a makeshift podium of tables, supporting a big display monitor that currently showed "61.53%". The diminutive Doctor Smith sat off in a corner, with a few spectators briefly hanging around to see what he was doing.

Running a flight-simulator on a laptop. No - wait, that inset view was of Earth from orbit. At that point the officer had asked plainly what Doctor Smith was doing.

'I am just unlocking the docking clamps that keep Dart Three secured to Arc One.' Amongst the display clutter on the screen, a small green rectangle blinked red repeatedly before disappearing. 'Excellent. After which I am going to pilot it to an interception of the Lithoi's base.'

And the captain had made his statement. He had years of experience flying M3's MEV.

'Because you're going to hit trouble when the Earth's curvature interrupts your signal. Not to mention Arcology One's own rotation.'

For a moment the other man's attention was occupied by his control joystick. He clicked the cursor over an onscreen button labelled "Engine" and the inset view changed rapidly, shifting to bring Earth into centre view.

'No, Captain, the trouble will begin when the Lithoi detect my guided missile. Fortunately my colleagues Downstairs are putting a diversionary scheme into motion as we speak.'

Oswald shrugged.

'Let me know if you need any help. Is it okay if I call back after our next run?'

The straw boater was tipped in polite acknowledgement as Doctor Smith concentrated on his piloting.

When the captain returned again from the next MEV lunar run the small man had taken off his coat, revealing a strange armless sweater made from what the captain believed was called "wool". The audience around him stood three deep and nobody tried to move away this time. The inset view on the laptop had been enlarged to fill almost half the screen, showing Australia in daylight.

The captain felt the hairs on his neck stand upright in awe: Australia stood on the other side of the globe! There was no way this picture could be real-time, not without a satellite communication network, and none of them existed any longer.

'Hello again, Captain,' said Doctor Smith without turning round. 'Impact in about twenty minutes.'

'Can't they shoot it down again, like they did the last one?' asked Oswald.

'They can try,' said one of the audience. 'They'd have to spot it first!'

'Whoopee!' squealed Ace in delight. Another makeshift balloon had exploded a kilometre up, disintegrating as the Lithoi sought it out with their base's beam weapon. Except it had taken them five attempts to hit this one, according to Kirwin's intelligent binoculars.

Captain Kirwin was sitting this one out. She'd been looking directly at the fifth balloon they'd launched when the Lithoi shot it, and her eyes were still recovering, with big blurry purple patches drifting across her vision. Before passing on the bins she'd dialled up the filter.

'How many shots was that?' asked Oscar, one of the couriers helping them. 'Four or five?'

'Five,' clarified Ace.

'Good. All that chaff is confusing their radar,' explained Kirwin. Their first four successful balloon launches had been carried aloft by the prevailing wind and their own candle-powered lift, soaring up high into the air over the Nullarbor Plain. Eventually their instability, fragility or an excessive gust of wind would collapse the balloon and a torrent of aluminium foil would begin to descend. This was the "chaff" Kirwin spoke of, and the Doctor's intent to baffle the alien radar had come to fruition.

So, the Lithoi were responding to the diversion as expected. The miniature balloons were difficult to detect, having very little mass or metal, and the launchers varied their release spot to avoid having the balloons follow a predictable route.

If any of the humans who had been working on the makeshift balloons could have seen the consternation caused within the Lithoi baseship, they would have felt immensely gratified.

Arkan 22, as nominal head of the mission, had been notified first by startled scanner teams that an aerial assault against them was underway. He had frantically raced to the sensor suite, only to find when he got there that the threat had been amended to an aerial "probe".

'What is this!' he'd hissed in anger and alarm. 'How can these primitives have aircraft!'

The lower-caste workers monitoring their sensors bobbed their heads, looked at each other and widened their eyes, all Lithoi non-verbal signs for "I don't know".

'They are not powered by any conventional means,' said the shift supervisor. 'We detect no stripped photons, no ion flow, no high-energy propulsion matrix, not even exhausted hydrocarbons.'

He pointed to the big three dimensional display where four returns were shown, in brackets.

'They have an in-built randomisation function that prevents prediction of their flight direction.'

A fifth return pinged into existence.

'Target that one and destroy it!' ordered Arkan 22. The baseship's central cannon was accordingly deployed, the beam set to begin collimation five hundred metres beyond the delicate camouflage membrane in order to avoid damaging it.

However, moments after the fifth human craft had been destroyed, one of the others vanished. Within moments the scanners began to suffer degradation of signal. Twice more the cannon came into operation, and the last human craft winked out of existence. Again, the scanning signal suffered from interference.

For over two hours the erratically flown human craft drifted across the scanning screens, sometimes being destroyed, sometimes vanishing mysteriously. Visual confirmation merely revealed dark objects that bobbed and weaved in strange avoidance patterns.

Finally, Solskan 75, a meteorologist and correspondingly of low-caste (for there was little difficulty in predicting weather when sitting in the middle of a desert) realised what had been happening. His status made access to the higher ranks tardy but he finally got through to Arkan 22, who had been watching in the company of Miskan 54.

'These objects are not moving with any degree of autonomy,' said meteorologist Solskan via speaker to Arkan 22. 'They are being moved by wind currents.'

'Wind?' asked the mission leader.

'Assuredly so. They must therefore be lighter than air. I conjecture they are being released - '

Arkan 22 cut the connection and stared at Miskan 54.

'A decoy!' he realised. All their sensors and effort had been directed at these infuriating encroaching objects –

'PROXIMITY ALERT!' boomed the speakers across the basehip as computer over-rides cut in. 'PROXI-'

A perceptible and violent tremor ran the length of the baseship, from the uppermost elevated high-caste living quarters to the lowliest subterranean workshop.

When the dust cloud settled, all that remained of the missile platform, the workers, their transports and the missiles themselves (not yet mated with their warheads) was a yawning crater fifty metres across and twenty deep, rimmed with molten aluminium. Eighty tonnes of lunarkrete had also boosted the terminal impact of Dart Three to such an extent that the baseship's camouflage membrane had been blasted to shreds.

The real victim of all this, in his own mind at least, was Orskan 94. Building missiles was put on hold as his artificers and workers were made to work on creating a new camouflage membrane. Whilst continuing to build flying eyes, of course, which were now to number five instead of the original two. All to be done with twenty-four workers less than before, since nobody outside had survived the human's missile attack from space, and yet – here he hissed a litany of curses that would have earned him demotion to a lesser caste at the very least – and yet that insufferable tyrant Arkan 22 wanted work to proceed even faster!

Orskan 94 wasn't very analytical. He wasn't paid or expected to be, after all; he was just a jobbing middle-caste spanner wielder. Still, he couldn't shake off the feeling that this contract had every possibility of turning into a nightmare.


	30. Chapter 31

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE: Always Unknowing

Check, said the Doctor to himself.

His attendant audience had been poised in breathless anticipation during Dart Three's descent, every moment expecting the inbound shuttle to be detected and destroyed. When the screen display changed from blurred shots of desert with a tracery of tracks, to alternating lines of static, an involuntary chorus of cheers went up.

Later, sitting outside and sipping a cup of chilled mate, he found the big American pilot, Oswald, coming to sit down with him.

'Don't mind, do you?' asked the other man. He pulled up a wicker chair that creaked alarmingly under his bulk and studied the small man drinking tea. The Veep's orders were clear: if Doctor John Smith asked for anything, he got it, instantly, no questions asked. This little guy was some kind of scientific genius, Einstein, Newton and Hawking in one package. Having seen the impossible piloting of Dart Three, Oswald began to realise just why the Veep wanted Doctor Smith looked after.

Except he didn't seem very enthusiastic about smacking the aliens base around.

'You seem a bit down, if I may say so,' ventured Oswald. 'Thought you'd be more buzzed.'

He got a look that began as a glare, then mellowed to a glance.

'The taking of any life is abhorrent to me,' he said quietly, a noticable Scottish brogue coming through the sad tone.

'Oh, come on!' blurted Oswald. 'The word is that these aliens – Lithoi – killed off most of humanity. You can't feel sorry for them!'

'The _tu quoque_ defence,' murmured Doctor Smith. He looked at his tea before looking directly at Oswald. 'Two wrongs do most not definitely make a right, Captain Oswald. However. However.'

The conversation sat in a sudden silence before the American dared to resume it.

'Ah – "however" what, Doctor Smith?'

'Eh? Oh, sorry, woolgathering. Sorry, that means daydreaming. No, it's just that I've been careful to escalate this struggle sequentially over time. Our alien squatters have been faced with rapidly diminishing returns yet choose to stay here, which puzzles me.'

Wisely, Oswald chose to stay silent.

The Doctor found himself, if not exactly on the horns of a dilemma, then staring at the approaching prongs with unpleasant clarity.

Arcology One needed the Lithoi to be distracted whilst making their terminal descent. His plan had been to use the improvised balloons that dispersed radar-baffling chaff. That would keep the aliens busy and degrade their ability to detect the sphere. His second intent had been to use Dart Three to precede the sphere and take advantage of the radar-baffling to inflict damage on their base.

None of that was now possible. The balloons were all gone. Yes, he could go and get the materials to create more, but the Lithoi knew about them now and wouldn't be fooled a second time. Dart Three had been expended and there wasn't anything else up here to be thrown around with such precision. Pangolin might have suited but would take an age to repair and jury-rig for such an operation. There wasn't an age left before the sphere began to de-orbit – the figures on the monitor representing total readiness had flicked to "66.7%", and the MEV would be bringing in the last five hundred tonnes of regolith in it's next run. There were hours left, and it would take days to convert Pangolin.

As decoys went, he knew of a persuasive one. Thankfully Ace wasn't present to put up any objection, as she so surely would. He sat and brooded for a while longer, which turned out to be a mistake: Ace might not be present on Arc One but there were other, more terrestrial equivalents able and willing to stand in for her.

Terry had been a seven day wonder aboard Arcology One, regaling the occupants with tales of walking along beaches, fishing for perch or bass, avoiding the funnel web spider in dunnies, keeping pet rats, enduring sand storms and dust devils – all very well, novel to the Arc's occupants whilst being utterly prosaic to him. Ace, the strange and beguiling girl who came along with Doctor Smith, had vanished to do work Downstairs, leaving him amidst twelve thousand strangers. They put him to work securing the sphere's small and spindly cattle in a set of pens, making sure they were tethered at each hoof to sturdy sub-surface girders. After that he'd been given a giant syringe full of an odd-smelling glue, and been sent out across Arc One to glue things flat against surfaces. On a couple of occasions the Doctor's travelling magic box had appeared but he'd either been on sleep-shift or it had gone again within seconds.

Not this time, though. Now that he'd emptied his glue syringe Terry decided work was over for this shift and that he'd go see the Doctor and scrounge a lift Downstairs, since the little man seemed to hop to and from orbit like a taxi service.

He found the small man sitting on a wicker chair, staring moodily into the distance. This stillness stood out as unusual amongst the hustle of Arc One's busy broods of workers.

'Hi there, Doc,' he began, causing the other man's eyes to swivel in his direction.

'Please. "Doctor", "Doctor Smith", or even "Doctor John Smith", but not "Doc". I am not an American mid-Western gunslinger,' came the mild protest. 'Are you coping?'

Terry shrugged.

'So far. They don't know what to make of me, quite. What's boring and everyday to me is strange and fascinating to them, and vice versa.' He took a seat in an empty chair, then leaned closer. 'What I wanted to ask is, could you take me back Downstairs in your magic travel-gadget?'

A certain coolness seemed to emanate from the Doctor.

'Don't you believe the sphere will make it down intact?'

The young man cleared his throat in embarassment.

'I don't see how a big glass bubble like this can fly safely to land Downstairs - '

A _tchah!_ of irritation interrupted him.

'Don't tell me that's the opinion of the residents? Terry, the sphere will land intact. After landing it won't be structurally sound again, and as many as one per cent of the crew may become casualties, but it will land safely. I guarantee it.'

'Then there's the Lizards,' stated Terry, matter-of-factly. 'Nobody else seems to want to discuss 'em, for whatever reasons, which is silly because they're down there.'

The Doctor stood so suddenly that Terry thought he'd offended the strange man.

'You leave them to me, Terry! Didn't I mention a guarantee? Oh, I take it that you now have a Tab of your own?'

Correct; Terry showed the miniature electronic device inherited from a previous resident, only for the Doctor to whip it out of his hand and begin to input data.

'Shan't be a minute, just a few instructions for the scions about what to do and when. There. Finished. Pass it on to someone to pass on to one of the scions, Doctor Davros by preference.'

Having introduced strangeness into their conversation, the Doctor then proceeded to drag Terry across Arc One's hydroponic soils, towards the TARDIS.

'Come on, come on!' he burbled. 'First one to get there is a rotten egg. We need to go visit a young person who goes by the name of Alex.'

Insupportable, really: with all this going on Upstairs he'd forgotten that there was at least one person Downstairs with a history.

Orskan 94 had chased his lesser workers at a relentless rate that would have made Arkan 22 nod in approval, bullying them into completing one of the flying eyes within twelve hours of the external missile base being destroyed. To human eyes the slaving low-caste Lithoi would have been slower than hungover incompetents slackers on a Friday afternoon, which was genetics for you.

Now that their missile strike couldn't happen, Orskan 94 presumed that the flying eyes would be sent out to the coastal towns to eradicate the human colonies there whilst the biologists worked on a particularly dreadful disease to eradicate most humans present elsewhere across the globe.

Good! Frankly, the sooner that happened, the sooner they got off this dreadful damp midden. After all, ten per cent of the crew had been killed – their Travellers amongst the human populations, the missile platform construction crew, and all those who had been tracked and ripped apart by the hunting canines. None of the returning Travellers had made it past the dingo packs, in what Orskan imagined was a variety of payback for the baseship's burning into ash of several dingo generations.

He caught himself. Thinking thoughts like that amounted to treason and betrayal, for which the penalty was Disassembly.

Undulating along the vertical construction lines and suspended assembly jigs, he pondered what else might go wrong. Not that it should, but the local humans had proved to be increasingly dangerous over the past few weeks. They had sniffed out the Travellers, destroyed the missile platform and – even if it was debated – hit the ocean with an asteroid from orbit. Those biologists had better come up with an awesome disease in order to stop this retaliation!

He looked out over the workshops and their frantic activity, seeing his obedient minions slaving away on the next four flying eyes, lots of sparks and electrical arcs illuminating the gloomy depths of the baseship. Several cast up a limb in acknowledgement of his presence, so he decided to give an address.

'Ahem! Loyal artificer minions of the workshop level, hear me, hear me.'

His intelligent collar caught the sounds, amplified them and transmitted to every nearby collar.

'I understand that I have driven us to extremes, in pursuit of what the higher castes have deemed essential. For all this, I apologise. We have had to sustain the baseship, carry out external work and replace lost equipment, when faced with an incredibly hostile environment. You have performed admirably.'

The purple prose carried on into the next sentence before he realised what his earnest contempt for the higher castes was leading him to.

'I salute your endeavour. May this praise sustain you!'

Amongst the varied levels and sub-levels, the retrenchments and extrusions of the baseship, this praise echoed amongst his minions.

Utilising the inter-departmental spy circuit, Arkan 22 felt justified in watching his disloyal subject. Orskan had put forward several reasons why they ought to abandon the project, desert Earth and forget ever being paid for having carryied out 99% of The Contract. Now he tried to attach the loyalty of the lesser minions to himself with false praise for completing one of the flying eyes!

Insufferable! One could not allow the lesser castes to presume, to anticipate elevation from their more prosaic position. Orskan was treading dangerous ground. His reputation and status rested on his technical qualifications and experience.

'I said, I saw a track on your super-duper wonder binoculars,' complained Ace. No word of a lie, out there in the far distant Nullarbor Plain, a fantastically-flying trace had flitted and darted across the digital dispay for severeal minutes before vanishing, like a flourescent moth suffering from Saint Vitus' dance. Of course, when Kirwin came to examine the lenses and display, there was nothing to see.

'It wasn't an insect close to the lens?' she asked, to a hostile shake of the head from Ace.

'No. In fact it had all the appearances of a flying eye, for your information.' She enlarged when her temper cooled enough. 'It manouevered like a robot, and yes I've seen enough of them operating to know what one looks and behaves like.'

Kirwin looked impressed at the conjectural leap, less so at the subsequent revelation.

'Okay. A flying eye. That's one of the stealth-enabled robot jets these lizards use, right?' She sucked her lower lip, thinking. Behind her, and in the murdered hamlet of Forrest, lay all the evidence she needed that these alien craft were deadly. The enormous, skinned, stinking carcass of the dead monster crocodile lying in the Euclan streets proved how deadly a flying eye was: they could probably vapourise a human being in less than a second.

'Just one?' she asked. Ace nodded. Kirwin cast around with the binoculars again, seeing if the flying eye was trying to sneak up on them. The baseship lay too far away to resolve, only the gently undulating plains beyond their sentry post on the dunes outside Eucla were visible all the way to the horizon. False-colour digital landscape in strident primary tones spread out to east and west, without anything moving; a vista in stasis.

'I don't think – AAHH!' she yelped as the flying eye suddenly jumped vertically into vision, a lenticular blue-white blur against the red and purple of the terrain, close enough to touch. Cringing back for a second in panic, Kirwin realised that the device was actually at least five kilometres away.

'What! What!' hissed an excited and nervy Ace. Kirwin gestured frantically at the big green box that lay behind them.

'Get the launcher out. Quickly!'

Ace fumbled the box's clips open and threw the lid back, revealing the sleek and well-engineered lines of the missile launcher. She plucked it from the restraining memory-foam, with the nearest missile, too.

Kirwin muttered a string of curses under her breath: the flying eye was growing larger in her vision, which meant it was approaching. At speed. There wouldn't be time to hand the bins to Ace, then take up the missile launcher herself, because in that time they'd have lost the alien craft and at that speed they'd not get a first chance to relocate it, let alone a second.

All this went across her mind in approximately one quarter of a second.

'Ace, you need to load the missile and fire it, because if I lose this thing in the bins, we're dead.'

Gloating at getting her hands on a Real Live Missile Launcher, because the Prof would probably drop down dead rather than let her manage such a feat whilst under his beady eyes, Ace got recalled to the real world with uncomfortable speed.

'Rip off the plastic seal over the missile's docking tube,' called Kirwin. 'That's the ass-end of the missile.'

She hastily dialled back on the binocular's gain, lost the eye for a split-second, panned back and forth and caught it again, now much closer. Two klicks, at the furthest: her digital ranging readout scrolled down too rapidly to check properly.

Scrunching sounds came as Ace ripped the plastic seal away with such force that she cut her finger.

'Now insert into the launcher's docking unit. Rotate counter-clockwise until it clicks and stops moving.'

Both were sweating now. Kirwin tried to stay calm, recalling with ease the different steps to take with the Mk 57 SLD Missile System as per manual; Ace tried not to let her sweating palms slip on the missile or the launcher, turned the warhead the wrong way, then realised and slid it into position with a solid _click_.

'There's a control pad on the side, turn it on by pressing the big green button. Turn the dial to "Live".'

Ace pressed the big green button, then tried turning the dial, which stubbornly refused to move at all and in fact sounded as if it would break if she tried any harder.

'It won't turn!' she hissed.

'The big green button – keep it pressed until the display comes on!' snapped Kirwin, dialling back on the binocular gain hastily to keep the dancing blue-white apparition in her sight. An "Ah!" of relief sounded behind her.

'Hold the launcher up against your shoulder and look into the sighting unit.'

Ace did. Nothing. Blank grey screen.

'I'm not getting anything,' she called, wondering if she'd missed an obvious step.

'Are you gripping the firing handle and forestock?' asked Kirwin, using one hand to brush sandy, gritty sweat from her brow. The flying eye now wobbled towards her, no more than a kilometre away, it's movements exagerrated by proximity. With a nasty shock she realised that this was real-time display without any magnification, the thing was that close.

'Yes!' said Ace, with feeling. 'If I grip them any harder they'll fall off!'

Kirwin realised there must be a malfunction in the sight unit. Probably something very minor that could be fixed in minutes, a loose wire, a dislodged battery, a logic paradox, except they had seconds, not minutes, to act.

She realised the solution immediately. _Eight hundred metres_.

'Ace, the sight unit's non-functional. I'm going to talk you onto target, okay?'

'Your funeral,' replied the young woman, shrugging her shoulders with such a devil-may-care attitude that Kirwin felt it even if she couldn't see it.

'I'm twelve o'clock, okay?'

'Gotcha.'

'Target is at one thirty.'

Ace oriented herself to an invisible clock face.

'Height – up to a three storey building.' _Three hundred metres_.

Ace lofted the massy weapon to what she imagined was the top of the Barclay's Bank in Neasden.

'Fire!' called Kirwin.

Ace realised she didn't know which was the "Fire" button or trigger or switch, then pressed the large red button close to her right thumb, a button that closed with a positive snap.

Did I get it right?

The missile fired, more than fired, it went off with a BANG! that left both women temporarily deaf whilst the backblast threw up a storm of debris that would have shredded Ace's black nylons, were she wearing them.

It was guessing, lucky guessing, and their mistakes cancelled each other out: Ace had aimed too low and Kirwin had called for firing too soon. Not only that. Kirwin realised from the sonic signature of the blast that Ace had selected for the missile launcher's anti-tank warhead, a warhead with little explosive payload but a fantastic velocity. More importantly (but not for them) the launch had been from a concealed position, at very short range and beneath the flying eye's sensor array.


	31. Chapter 32

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX: The Pride and the Pain

The Americans, with an unpleasantly ironic sense of humour, had christened Arcology One's de-orbiting as "Operation Cueball". In this case the sphere would be the ball, and MEV the cue. There would be assistance from several dozen solid rocket boosters, welded to the sphere's hull at very carefully calculated angles.

Once committed to descent and in the upper atmosphere, the sphere would be almost uncontrollable, subject instead to gravity, friction and meteorology. To this end Davros and his mathematics team were calculating _now_, in order to have a definitive, specific and within-ten-decimal-places landing point _then_. Time was limited. The Index now stood at 94.54%.

Which was when the Doctor threw his massive cast-iron spanner into the works.

'From whom?' asked Davy, surprised enough to manage his grammar effectively. 'The Doctor?'

He looked at the mute and unremarkable Tab as if it were about to sing, dance and bite him. A rice-paddy planter by the name of Hoang had jogged up to the scion, politely begged his attention and then offered the Tab, in the name of Doctor John Smith. "You know, that bloke who flies about in time and stuff."

The mathematics staff, all Pure/Applied qualified, looked at him with interest. He could see their minds churning and working.

'Okay!' he breezed, falsely. 'Opinions on why we really, really need to land on the Nullarbor Plain. Anyone?'

Three hours later the sphere suffered it's first non-designed Inertial Input when MEV fired up it's gigantic interplanetary fusion motor, an engine intended to put a one-thousand tonne spacecraft into Mars orbit. At first the sphere's denizens experienced a slight tremor, which slowly grew to become a perceptible vibration, that also generated a dull, buzzing roar. Loose objects rattled and fell. Not many, since nearly everything loose had been glued into immobility. Vast creaks and groans were heard and felt as the sphere flexed, a giant metallic beast unused to motion, coaxed into a gradually descending orbit.

Earth grew slowly bigger. More resonating sounds, like those of a hammer tuning a bell, came echoing across the inner spaces of the sphere. The ever-present tissue of clouds interfering with vision between North End and South End slowly disappeared. In fact, the vapours that fell onto the giant tetrahedral structure supporting the sphere were destroyed instantly thanks to the heat generated by the flexing girder structure.

Gravity, to begin with, followed by friction and heating, sought to crush the sphere. The overall design fought back, aided by the Doctor's erected metal truss and the newly installed reinforcing girders that redistributed stresses and shear forces, at the cost of straining the outer walls. Alongside the roaring and tolling came hideous squeals and shrieks as metal suffered.

Without warning to most of the sphere's crew, the shuddering stopped as if commanded. What they didn't know was that MEV had disengaged and the conducted vibration of the nuclear power-plant was now a forgotten memory.

Blessed silence and stillness was not to last long. Within thirty minutes a faint and ghostly whispering could be heard: the sound of the incredibly thin and attenuated planetary atmosphere exerting a drag on the sphere's exterior. Slowly and remorselessly the whispering became a thin shrieking, that became a subdued roar. Vibration arrived anew, shaking everyone and everything. A thousand objects not properly secured or glued began to rattle and work loose, adding to the general din.

This trial by noise did not diminish over time. Quite the opposite. It got worse. An hour after entering orbit, Arcology One resembled a flaming torch scorching the heavens, girdling Earth in a complicated spiral pattern.

For Davy, the hardest thing to cope with was smell. He could understand that his own pocket world, held aloft in the heavens since day one, was able to move and vibrate and endure severe thermobaric stress whilst remaining intact, but – the smell!

It must be heat, he told himself. Holding a conversation with oneself was very calming, if both sides of the conversation could remain composed. Yes: heat. The heat has permeated Arc One's hull and started to warm up our mud and silt deposits, as well as the fecal waste collectors. Not to mention the structural components that made up Arc One, and all their decades-worth of collected organic waste, and any interstitial vermin that remained hidden from us.

Understanding the horrid reek didn't dismiss it, however. Strapped into a wicker chair that now boasted a makeshift crash-cradle, he fidgeted and tutted to himself and checked his Tab every five seconds. All around him, clustering at the North End, were thousands of other crew, strapped into crude wicker frames that had consumed the sphere's entire stock of the material, all awaiting the return of gravity now that the sphere's rotation had stopped.

With a start, he realised that they had been under way for over ninety minutes. The MEV, gravity and booster rockets had all conspired to _not_ destroy Arc One. He checked the Doctor's Tab notes.

" - approximately ninety to one hundred minutes after departure orbit, Arc One will have endured the first and biggest test, that of physical survival of atmospheric re-entry."

It was true. Instead of rotational force providing the illusion of gravity, he sat still and felt a whole lot less than the normal. Or was that an illusion, his mind playing tricks? Ah! That sliver of sunlight playing underneath the warped rim of a hull-plate spoke true. The plate was a potential risk during this descent, because it might be ripped away by friction.

A dismounted monitor screen taken from the Communications shack showed the view directly beneath the sphere: Australia was approaching from the east as Arcology One's descent slowed and became steeper.

Another line from the Doctor's Tab-bound instructions came back to Davy: "Whilst still in the upper atmosphere, aerofoil-sprung releases will allow the deployment of the drogues, which will slow Arc One's descent significantly. These will in turn deploy the multi-hectare braking parachute."

The astronomy staff had insisted on sticking remote cameras on the outer hull, both to view what lay beneath the sphere and what lay above it. Only a couple of the lower-hull cameras survived, displaying what Davy could now see. The astronomers themselves were looking as the first dozen parachutes came whipping out of the storage bins, giving the sphere a gentle tug as they did so. Several attachments failed, leaving tangled parachutes slowly fluttering behind the sphere's wake. Finally the tension in their cables became sufficient to extract the giant parasail from it's central bin – actually an adaptation of Pangolin's dock – and another tug came, harsher, more sustained than earlier.

Davy glanced at his Tab and realised that he felt gravity for the first time ever. Genuine gravity, not centripetal force – and they were now two hours into the descent. And intact. He turned to face the others around him, still not able to take in the fact that they were all alive.

'The hard part is over,' he said, thinking aloud. 'And - and we're all still alive.'

'Yeah,' agreed one of the mathematics staff. 'Except Doctor Smith insisted we come down directly over you know who.'

'I have faith,' said Davy. 'He's done everything he claimed to be able to do. He said - on the Tab – that he'd stop the Lithoi attacking us.'

Privately Davy wondered how the diminutive wonder-worker would manage such a feat. Doctor Smith didn't seem keen on mayhem or murder and just how could he tackle planet-killing aliens when he was armed with little but his wits and curious sonic beam device (hardly a weapon!)?

Tracking down Alex wasn't easy. He had been escorted away on the fishing smacks together with the other residents of New Eucla, landed well to the west and then moved on to smaller townships along the coast. The Doctor landed the TARDIS at Barralonga and made enquiries about a "Starman", whom everyone recognised. The five people who he enquired of all told the same – that the young stranger had been sent further to the east, with the remaining Euclan refugees, and was it true about monsters from outer space trying to blow up the planet –

This story was repeated at the next township, Birmingham, and at the next, New Hampton. Given that the number of refugees moving on had declined successively at each town, the Doctor knew he couldn't be far from discovering Alex.

Which they did in Lancashire Landing. Rather, he discovered them: they had landed in a quiet street composed of the usual glass-panelled houses, astride a beaten earth track. A few casual travellers gawped at the strange appearance of a blue police box in their quiet coastal fishing village. No sooner had both Terry and the Doctor departed and locked the timeship doors than a freckled youth with tousled red hair came racing down the road to meet them.

'I heard you!' he yelled, skidding to a stop seconds before slamming into them.

'Very good,' said the Doctor, drily amused. 'Listen, you two. Arc One is coming to land, in the desert north of New Eucla. Thre they'll be pretty much stranded in the outback without transport.'

Alex's jaw hung open when he realised that the sphere was being de-orbited.

'Coming in to land! From _orbit_?' he gasped. Terry suddenly realised that this feat must be more difficult than the Doctor let on. He'd implied that it would be successful, not that it was almost impossible.

'Yes. Here's what I want you two to do - ' and he began to plot conspiratorially with them.

Orskan 94 happily presumed he was being summoned to the higher levels for an official congratulation on his section's construction of a flying eye already, whilst still fabricating the giant camouflage sheet for the baseship. His artificer minions were also building missiles, but at a lower priority, and he'd reduced the shifts working on the flying eyes now that one was actually operational. His workers needed sufficient rest and recuperation or they'd begin to make stupid mistakes, despite what Arkan 22 might order.

He took the lifting platform, musing on their Contract. Personally he wouldn't have ever dreamed of taking it on – with clients like this you could never be entirely sure they wouldn't simply exterminate you once the terms were fulfilled. Wriggling his limbs in the Lithoi equivalent of a sigh, he condemned their clients to the Outer Darkness. Cyborgs! Sufficiently organic to be susceptible to anger, insufficiently mechanical to be predictable.

The giant lift came to a halt and he undulated out, only to be surprised by an escort of two armed and armoured guards from the little-used Internal Security detail. One of them directed an electronic suppressor at him, and a worried Orskan felt all his hi-tec gadgets die.

'What is the meaning of this!' he blustered, drawing himself up to full height.

'Move to the Briefing Chamber,' ordered one of the guards. When Orskan hesitated the guard's weapons collar activated and directed a laser snout between his eyes; Orskan realised he was in bigger trouble than he could have imagined. No congratulations, obviously.

When he entered the room a small panel of his fellow Lithoi were waiting: Arkan 22, with Miskan 54, Nilkam 34, Harkan 23 and Gelken 27. All higher-caste: Leader, Anthropology, Biology, Physics and - Astronomy. Odd. What did the sky-watchers ever have to contribute?

'What -' he began, before realising his e-collar had died and no sounds were emerging beyond what he could make himself. 'Why am I here!' he hissed at full volume.

'This court sits in arraignment,' intoned Arkan, pompously. 'Here before us is the plaintiff. Orskan 94, you are accused of treason. How do you plead?'

Orskan felt his scales change colour, so great was his shame and anger.

'What!' he hissed, barely able to speak through his temper.

'How do you plead!' intoned Arkan, not bothering to look at his subordinate.

'NOT GUILTY!' shrieked Orskan, outraged. How could this be happening to him!

They presented the evidence, recorded film of the single flying eye in action, flying along. Along it flew, until it flew apart. Not having seen the film, Orskan's flinch when the eye exploded was genuine. Thanks to the low angle of Ace's missile launch and it's low explosive yield, the Lithoi assumed sabotage or disaster, not armed interception.

'As you see, your construction was faulty. Not only is our only flying eye destroyed, but you have deliberately slowed construction of the other flying eyes.'

'Only because we already had a working one,' he sullenly informed them. 'I can't pluck objects from thin air. My minions need proper rest or their work suffers.'

A low murmuring went back and forth between the different heads of department.

'Ah, yes, "your" minions,' said Arkan, silkily, in a manner that promised trouble. 'They do not _belong_ to you, Orskan. You are not of sufficiently high caste to own workers. You merely supervise.'

'What?' gurgled Orskan, not sure where this new direction was leading. He got the feeling that he was being set up to take any and all blame for the problems they'd suffered so far.

Mirskan bared his fangs in disapproval.

'Have you finished completing a new camouflage cover? Created the missile system? Built more flying eyes? No? Hardly a creditable performance, is it!'

'I have almost thirty workers fewer than I should have,' replied Orskan. 'And I'm being called on to manage three different major tasks simultaneously.'

'Are you saying you cannot manage?' asked Harkan 23, slyly.

'NO,' snapped their victim, spotting the trap. 'That flying eye wasn't faulty, either. The humans blew it up. They've been getting far too dangerous lately - '

Arkan had briefed his fellow heads about Orskan's pet fear so they cut in quickly.

'With what!' snorted Harkan 23. 'Javelins? They were using balloons to distract us last time!'

'Before you add an attempt to default on our Contract, I will pronounce judgement,' intoned Arkan, going for dignified but hitting pompous (at least in Orskan's biased opinion).

'You are found guilty of Treasonous Misconduct, Malicious Negligence and Attempted Sedition, for which the sentence is death. However, in light of your technical skills and prior good record, this sentence is commuted to permanent loss of caste. Your collars will be stripped from you and generic ones substituted. You will be detained until the sentence has been carried out.'

Orskan's scales changed colour again as he seethed at his judgement.


	32. Chapter 33

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN: Siren

The Doctor rarely carried arms; it went against his better nature. For all that, he had passed muster in the discipline of ballistae, slingshots, bows, arquebus', muskets, rifles, phased plasma weapons, particle beam cannons and Demat guns. The weapon he carried now was entirely novel, not to mention peculiar. Still, it was essential for his purpose, which was distraction. Sabotage, too, if he managed to find a secluded corner of the Lithoi baseship for more than thirty seconds.

Having scouted out the location with the dingo leader, he knew precisely where to rematerialise, and deliberately chose the baseship's lower but not lowest levels. Buried deepest in the earth would be the lowest caste worker stations, and above those would be the lesser-utilised sections for storage. Got to keep the hoi polloi at a distance from their betters, he mused, acidly.

His accurate guesstimate of function and occupation proved correct: the TARDIS materialised in a gloomy, underlit corridor deserted in both directions. Solid walls of unbroken grey enamel marched for a hundred metres either way, escorting a grey enamel floor and grey enamel ceiling. Only the subdued lighting varied the scene's inherent greyness.

'Calling Terence Conran,' joked the Doctor, pleased with his own humour, like any bad comedian. He caught himself. 'Enough procrastination! "But screw your courage to the sticking place",' he continued. What might be considered "girding oneself for battle" followed, which consisted of donning his jacket, hooking the ever-present umbrella over an elbow, cocking his boater at a jaunty angle and putting his pistol upside down in a pocket.

Window-dressing aside, the Doctor realised he was not merely sticking his head in the lion's jaws, he was inviting it to bite whilst jabbing a finger in each eye: his chances of survival were slim to vanishing, wildly dependent on how well or poorly he improvised in the next few minutes. Not that he felt much choice remained to him, as twelve and a half thousand people depended on him directly, and the entire remaining population of poor old battered Earth indirectly.

Before leaving the timeship, he checked on Arc One's descent: the monitor showed a crisp, clear image of the giant sphere two hundred kilometres above, dangling below a vast metallic canopy, the supporting cables being too thin to be resolved at this distance. The sphere's surface was scorched, pitted and looked stressed to near breaking-point – but hadn't reached that point yet. No obvious breaches, and if his advice on flexible panels for sealing leaks or holes had been taken then this gamble might well come off.

If, he cajoled himself, if the Lithoi were distracted during this last most vulnerable time for the sphere, as it sloooowly fell to earth under it's parachute. There were slatted panels in the chute's multi-hectare area that could be opened or closed, thus allowing a small degree of control over the descent, as long as there was no urgency.

' "Lay on, MacDuff",' he quoted, opening the doors and stepping out.

Immediately the dead, stale, dehydrated air of the baseship assaulted his lungs and nose, forcing his eyes to water in self-defence. Smarting with dessication, he continued on past the sealed doors of this particular corridor, noting the descriptions on their jambs: "Collar Components: non-lethal force" "Ceremonial whips and pinions" "Entertainment videos: lowest caste compatible: nil literacy required".

He had a choice: a lift halfway down on either side of the corridor, leading to who-knew-where, or a spiral staircase at each terminus of the corridor. Choosing the stairs, since he could control how rapidly he ascended, the Doctor noticed more information panels on the stairwell wall.

"**BRIDGE ↑↑↑↑↑**

**BIOLOGY ↑↑↑↑**

**ANTHROPOLOGY↑↑↑**

**ASTRONOMY ↑↑**

**PHYSICS ↑**

**STORES←→**

**MECHANICS↓**

**COMMISSARY↓↓**

**PRISON↓↓↓**"

This latter caught his eye. Were there any human prisoners held there, stolen from their communities to allow a Transport version of themselves to parade around at leisure? Or those who couldn't be mind-controlled into obedient slavery, perhaps. Or relatives or friends held to coerce those who might resist the Lithoi. Or –

Enough shilly-shallying. Get there and find out! he told himself. Then suited action to words. The lighting didn't get any brighter in the lower levels, making him wonder about how the Lithoi's optics functioned. Slowly, at a guess. No need for visual acuity when you move slower than treacle in midwinter.

Three floors down, he darted a peek around the corner of the stairwell. Another anonymous grey corridor, broken in ennui by the glaring red bars around a doorway close to the stairwell. A lizard wearing ceramic armour stood outside the brazen doorway.

Bullseye! gloated the Doctor. Prisoners, prepare to be freed!

Having said this he paused and watched for another five minutes. The guard didn't visibly move from his station, in fact seemed to barely move for anything including breathing.

_Oho. A very slow metabolism. Very, very slow. Were it not for that art-deco studded collar, I'd not have any trouble putting the kibosh on matey. As it is, that collar looks to be full of sensors and lasers and computer technology to compensate for metabolic backwardness_.

Stepping out from the concealment of the stairwell, the Doctor brought his pistol to bear and shouted "Freeze!" in what he hoped was a commanding voice.

The Lithoi guard's e-collar picked up the intruder before the guard even swivelled his head aside. A human being inside the baseship didn't feature in the software's parameters, so there was no blaze of laser and sudden death of the intruder. When the lizard finally directed it's eyes at the intruder, it witnessed a human, dressed in strange clothing and carrying a device for shielding from water. One of the human's arms was extended, bearing a yellow plastic device that resembled a caricature of a semi-acquatic terrestrial avian.

That a human had penetrated it's baseship staggered the lizard, which was all the time needed for the Doctor to pull his Donald Duck Super-Soaker's trigger and spray the creature with a fine stream of water.

When the Internal Security lizard witnessed a solid beam of dihydrogen monoxide being fired at it, and sufferd a hit on his lower belly scales, the unfortunate alien went into screaming spasms of panicked terror. It thrashed around, jerked across the corridor and slammed it's head into the wall. Despite the ceramic helmet, it was a severe slam and the Lithoi collapsed in a senseless heap.

A further quick spray of water into the Prison lock provoked a geyser of sparks that allowed the door to be dragged slowly open, bringing the Doctor face-to-face with the prisoners.

Three Lithoi. Not a human being in sight.

Entering cautiously, the Doctor confirmed that he faced three lizards who were chained to the walls with heat-sealed plastic restraints around their torsos. None of them wore the metal collars he'd witnessed on other Lithoi.

The trio solemnly looked at him. The middle prisoner opened it's mouth and began speaking.

' - ' it began, a single sound that went on for twenty seconds.

What's this! Has the TARDIS' translation gimmickry gone wrong? He wondered.

'-' continued the long drawn-out speech.

The Doctor leant forward and frowned. Was this creature trying to communicate or was it suffering from hypologorrhea?

'-'

Impatiently, he gestured in a universal "hurry-up" motion understood across the galaxy.

'-'

Yes – nearly there! Come on, lizard, keep going –

'-'

The Timelord stood back, scratching his head before realisation struck.

' "Hoo arr you". Who are you! Oh, I see!' he replied, to complete incomprehension from the lizards. He repeated the phrase as slowly as he could manage whilst still sounding comprehensible, and the middle lizard leaned forward in what seemed to be the Lithoi equivalent of a nod.

'I am the Doctor,' he intoned, taking thirty seconds to drone out his introduction. Despite this, he realised his speech was near the limit of intelligibility for the aliens thanks to his inherent speed. What vital information they had to impart would take hours, days even, to extract at this rate.

Holding up a hand to prevent another incredibly protracted question, he rooted around in his pockets for any easily-assimilable metabolic boosters. Nothing along the lines of the applique patches that Captain Kirwin boasted.

'Oho. Let's see what a sugar rush does to you, eh?' he mused to himself, picking up an emergency reserve bag of jelly babies from one of his innumerable pockets. He took one of the sweets and bit into it before offering the remnant to the middle Lithoi, who seemed to be the leader of the three.

Orskan had been simmering in a conciliatory bog of self-pity alongside two of his more loyal, if foolish, minions. They had protested the demotion of their nominal superior and were to be made hideous examples of, to better motivate the slaving masses down in the workshops.

Endless boring hours had drifted by in the cramped prison quarters. An enamelled cell no bigger than a large wardrobe, with a single low-power light, and restraints that kept prisoners uncomfortably upright, Orskan had exhausted it's delights in the space of five seconds.

Then the door lock had violently blown apart, throwing sparks everywhere, before the door was slowly pushed open and –

a single human being stepped into the prison. Not just _any_ human, no: this was the one from New

Eucla who had destroyed a flying eye with catering utensils, and exposed their Transports and, for all he knew, brought down that amazingly co-incidental asteroid.

'Who are you!' blurted Orskan, quivering with nerves.

'WhoareyouIamtheDoctor,' shrilled the human, speaking almost too fast to be understood. Then, it's hands a blur, it dug around in the strange straw-coloured outer garments before producing a miniature human caricature – and then bit the head off, before offering the remnant to Orskan.

Reluctantly, the prisoner licked up the offering, chewed it briefly and suspiciously before champing madly and swallowing.

Delicious! decided Orskan. Not only that, he felt a strange buzzing animation throughout his muscles, a frantic quivering that began in his stomach and surged from the tip of his tail to the crest of his skull, permeating him with a feeling of invincibility and might. His gaze fell upon his plastic restraint; with a mighty spasm his muscles split the polymer and it fell apart into uselessness.

'Doctor!' he snapped. 'That was a biomorphic booster?'

The Doctor looked on as the recipient of his glucose surprise underwent a metabolism acceleration. Several orders of magnitude, too. When the question came, it was delivered in a matter-of-fact tone, easily understandable to the attuned ear.

'Not really. Say more a temporary energy enhancer. I need to communicate easily with you.'

The Lithoi's beady eyes regarded the Doctor.

'So I guessed. For what, I wonder. Also, could you spare a booster for my loyal minions here?'

Their tale was soon told. The trio were prisoners after the fact, a living explanation of why the Lithoi had undergone such tribulations in achieving their Contract. Scapegoats, in other words. Orskan 94 strongly suspected that once their critical construction work had been completed, all three would be marched outside to be left to the mercy of the elements. Death by atmospheric precipitation. Or, more likely still, they would be arraigned and executed to establish that the ruling caste were superior and wrathful and not to be crossed.

'So your options are: stay in prison and be executed. Escape from prison and be hunted by both your fellow aliens and the humans of the littoral communities, not to mention intelligent dingoes with a long race-memory of Lithoi mistreatment. Or – hmmm. There _is_ a third way.'

'Which is?' asked one of the anonymous prisoners.

'Help me sabotage your attempt to murder Planet Earth's population. If you do that and survive, I can guarantee to provide you with a piece of the planet to call your own. A nice dessicated bit of desert in the Gobi, or the Sahara with zero rainfall, or lovely cosy Death Valley.'

The stunned Lithoi had to get their intellect around the concept of negotiation, operating as a coalition, consensus politics and above all - trust.

'What's in it for you?' asked Orskan, typically blunt.

The Doctor stared at the amoral creature, which quailed under that stony gaze.

'The survival of Homo Sapiens, a species I have invested quite a bit of time and trouble in.' Orskan felt his scales ripple. Describing the humans as "Homo Sapiens" implied that this strangely-clad hum- no – no, it wasn't a human being. He concentrated. What other species were humanoid, near-omniscient, abhorred violence? What other species utilised advanced technology that allowed them to breach the walls of an impregnable space-going fortress with utter impunity?

'By the Great Spirit!' he whispered. 'A Gallifreyan!' The not-human displayed a facial rictus that Mirskan described as a "smile", an expression that could be read many different ways.

There were tales told amongst the stars of the aloof, remote, inscrutable and awesome Time Lord society from Casterberus, who took it upon themselves to impose order on anything involving time travel. And other whisperings, too, about a lone stranger in voluntary exile from Time Lord society, who turned up in strange places at opportune moments.

'Doctor John Smith,' said the not-human, introducing itself as if at a formal function.

Or inopportune moments, if you were plotting to destroy a planet's population.

'If we help you, we get to escape?' queried one of the nameless workers.

That, reflected the Doctor, was one of the drawbacks of a rigidly heirarchical society: once you were beyond the boundaries of the system, you had no interest in seeing it prevail.

'I will personally guarantee to relocate you.' He paused for a moment and carried on as if he was the only person present. 'I mentioned deserts, didn't I? Perhaps the Namib is the best place you could settle. Yes, yes, I think so: Namibia.'

Using a hand-held device that irked both Lithoi's tympanic membranes, the Doctor resonated their bonds into friable rubbish, allowing them to escape the cell with ease.

Once outside, he cautioned them all against over-confidence. Orskan calmly stole the unconscious guard's collar, armour and helmet, taking care not to get any dihydrogen monoxide on himself: already the guards lower belly scales were beginning to blister and distort where the deadly blast had hit. For a moment the alien felt himself non-plussed when the Gallifreyan stooped to swat the water away with his protective headgear.

'What are your names?' asked the Gallifreyan of the two lesser Lithoi, who exchanged glances with each other and Orskan. 'Oh, I see. Too low-caste to have names?'

'I am Artificer, First Class, 1089' said one alien, before indicating the other. 'He is Technician, Second Class, 3462.'

'Art and Tec,' declared the Doctor in dubbing them, feeling the tug of a pop-culture moment that passed without recognition. 'I predict that our friends in the Bridge will shortly discover that you've escaped and send along a party to investigate. Let's find a new home.'

Such a consultative approach baffled the aliens for a second, until the Doctor moved off and they simply followed. He cautiously began to ascend the port stairwell with his trio of rescued in tow, and not a second too soon: as they vanished up the spiral stairs the sound of an opening lift came from the prison level.

'This is the Commissary,' explained Orskan, when they drew level with the next floor up. His explanation wasn't necessary because the faint smell of food wafted to them. Bland and homogenous, judged the Doctor, with the nose of a man trained in sixteenth century cordon bleu.

'Right!' he declared. 'Let's go begin sabotage!'

Orskan looked at the not-human with surprise, and his two minions passed by before he gathered his wits. Sabotage? In the Commissary? Surely Physics or the baseship's drive plant would be better targets!

The Commissary level was split into two by the walkway, which was bounded on each side by a low barrier at ankle height, and the lift-shafts stood halfway down the walkway. On the left side of the walkway an open-plan dining area sported at least a hundred low tables and forms, most in a non-descript maze, a few behind another barrier. To the right was the galley and a smaller number of communal dining tables.

Every Lithoi head from this shift of diners, perhaps forty aliens across the cavernous floor, swivelled slowly to regard the intruders with a rearing motion of the spine and head.

'Surprise!' beamed the Doctor, as dozens of laser collars directed towards him. They didn't bother him: at this range the beams would go right through him, hit the baseship hull, reflect internally and destroy the entire Commissary area. A few of the closer lasers might even breach the hull itself. 'I'm the Galloping Gourmet come to inspect your kitchen.'

Slowly, with all the pace of sedated molluscs, the Lithoi began to contort themselves away from their tables.

The Doctor bowed low, mockingly.

'I see I've arrived at an inopportune moment. Do forgive me – I'll come back later.'

He took a single step backwards and collided with Art. Or Tec.

'Can you - ' he began, before both pairs of the Lithoi's stubby upper limbs closed on his biceps and scapulae, piercing his jacket and tank top. The four sets of talons effectively imprisoned the Doctor's upper arms, pinioned as they were thanks to the claws holding tight: he struggled before realising that the Lithoi's mass equalled his own and it's strength, sucrose-enhanced and applied at a precise angle, bettered him.

'Inform the Bridge!' squealed Art to the very slowly approaching Lithoi. 'I have captured a human intruder! Elevate my caste!'

He repeated the message again, slower this time. A desperately struggling Doctor witnessed flickering lights on the approaching alien's collars and realised his compromised position had been transmitted to the higher-caste Lithoi on the Bridge.

'Treachery!' hissed Tec, coming up behind Art and preparing to slay his fellow minion. The Doctor noticed Orskan's voice was notable for it's absence. If he managed to turn around then the alien turncoat would have vanished from sight.

'Tec! Don't bother, I'm done for!' he shouted, his voice giving the glottal Lithoi language an urgency it normally lacked. 'Get out of here! Get to the Stores level!'

The alien raced past him, giving Art a double set of savage back-and-forth gouges across his upper back in passing that sent the traitor flinching in pain. This also caused the Doctor considerable pain as the alien twisted in reflex without relinquishing it's hold.

'No, not the lift!' called the Doctor. Tec cast a glance over his shoulder, then at the forty Lithoi advancing on him before darting towards the lifts again. He stood by the left-hand doors and jabbed at the button to call the lift cage down, watching indicator lights descend.

The end was close. Before the left-hand lift could arrive, the right-hand lift doors drew apart and a clutch of Internal Security aliens wearing armour emerged. Their laser collars immediately focussed on Tec, who snarled and flew at them, talons flashing. Blood and scales spattered the walls of the lift before a dozen lasers killed the renegade minion.

Seeing this disastrous occurence take place and before any lasers could be fired, the Doctor used a ju jitsu move to unseat Art, whose grip was slackening. Both fell forward, the Doctor onto the unforgiving grey ceramic of the floor, Art onto the more yielding Gallifreyan.

An incredibly short series of high-pitched _zaps!_ came as stray laser bolts zipped around the Commissary, including a brief and frightening tug at the Doctor's back. The sounds ended in a resounding explosion, followed by faint pattering. After that came a quiet, broken only by muted sizzling. From his position the Doctor could only guess what had happened – Tec's frantic attack had caused the guards to fire before they had reached a safe firing point, and in desperate self-preservation rather than cool calculation. So high-energy laser bolts had gone darting around the Commissary.

Art felt like a dead weight on his back, so the Timelord rolled to one side, feeling and hearing the alien slump off him.

With an hideous irony, the cooking smells in the Commissary level now included roasted Lithoi. Art had been hit lower-torso by a partially-defocussed laser bolt that had almost burnt him in two. If the Doctor had not fallen forward, he would have been literally cut off at the knees. Across the echoing chamber, at least a dozen aliens were dead or mutilated by the errant laser barrage. Disgusting smokes and stinks chased each other across the floor, interspersed with a strange, pleasant and familiar one: baked bread.

Peering off to the right, the Doctor saw that the kitchen had been hit by only one laser bolt, but that single strike had been on what must be a Lithoi oven, which now looked like a peeled banana. The pattering noise of earlier was easily explained – bits of partially cooked dough littered the floor like popcorn.

The Internal Security detail advanced on him from the lift. Three of them lay dead in the lift, and two more with severe injuries were supported by colleagues. The half-dozen remaining focussed their weapons collars on the Doctor.

This is unusual! he pondered. _Reducing_ my metabolic rate to communicate is rare. Still, I managed with the Ice Warriors. And I have whole minutes before these aliens arrive.

'Stop! Your leaders will be angry if you kill me. I'm a genius!' he managed to intone a minute later, taking another minute to speak the words.

The more elevated caste-members on duty on the Bridge didn't realise at first what tribulations were afoot when the TARDIS arrived. Firstly, the timeship was so far beyond the parameters of the baseship's sensors that no alarms were tripped. Secondly, the Lithoi's arrogant assumption that no human being (or human-_resembling_ being) could threaten them meant no particular worry about patrols or internal security, although the spy circuitry might have helped had they been disposed to use it. Thirdly, when a critical fault indicator blinked into operation above "Prison", they didn't hurry to investigate. Not until Art's high-speed incomprehensible gibberish broadcast from the Commissary was followed by barely comprehensible gibberish did they realise subversion was underway and despatch a section of guards to capture the escapees.

A greatly reduced guard section escorted the sole surviving captive to the Bridge, where the Lithoi looked on with silent amazement.

'Bring it closer!' came the order, and seven armour-plated guards crowded the Doctor towards their leaders.

Despite trying to keep his metabolism slowed, or more likely because of this, due to the sheer physical effort involved, the Doctor found himself sweating. He took in his surroundings: a giant circular room, with banks of computers and computer operators lining the walls, and island consoles across the floor space. The dry air stung his eyes and he blinked, causing half a dozen approaching lizard folk to focus on his eyes with unusual intensity.

Hang on – seven guards?

'Great Spirit!' declared one Lithoi, backing away.

'My personal hygeine is ususally more closely observed,' he apologised. Another higher-caste lizard stopped sliding towards him and backed off, too.

'He gives off anti-capture fluid,' commented a Lithoi, probably a biologist. 'Humans exude water from holes in their skin, to fend off enemies.'

I take it back, not a biologist, more likely a high-energy physicist.

'What are you here for? Sabotage? Assassination? Terms of abject surrender?' asked the lizard still remaining behind a protective wall of other Lithoi.

'If you only knew,' murmured the Doctor.

'What does it have in it's pockets?' asked another high-caste Lithoi hanging back behind a shield of others, instantly identifying itself to the Doctor as these creature's leader.

Rather than risk half an hour of pocket emptying and explanation, the Timelord slapped the bottom of his lower right jacket pocket, causing the contents to fly outwards and fall to the ground.

'What have we got? Let's see – nineteen thirty-two one cent piece, twenty grammes of the Berlin Wall, elastic band, ampoule of smart gel, Sir Isaac's plumbob - ' and he shuddered from head to foot as he brought his metabolism back up to normal, shivering in a reflex that made his teeth rattle together ' - oh, and that big yellow plastic thing _is full of water that would explode into a cloud of steam if it were lasered_ - '

Every Lithoi on the Bridge not attending to outstandingly important work was looking at the strange human exhibiting strange behaviour – strange even by human standards.

So they missed Orskan – that extra seventh guard – hitting the novelty water gun with a laser bolt, which caused a cloud of vapour to form instantly.

Every Lithoi on the Bridge fled in terror at the apparition of dihydrogen monoxide in super-heated form. Of course they were beaten by the Doctor and Orskan who rapidly descended stairwells, until Orskan started to flag.

'I should thank you for sneaking along and helping to rescue me,' thanked the Doctor, passing the slowing alien a jelly-baby.

'Typical Lithoi cunning. Think nothing of it,' replied Orskan, mashing the sweet furiously between his fangs. 'Besides, it's good to get my own back on that goozlery Arkan 22.'

With no warning, the subdued corridor illumination dipped even further before resuming to it's wan normality. A temporary flutter in the low background hum of air conditioning caught the Doctor's ears.

'That would be dihydrogen monoxide penetrating into the Bridge's computer equipment,' he guessed, grinning at Orskan. The alien looked back.

'Did you _plan_ to get caught?' he asked. 'How else could you place your sabotage device within the inner sanctum?'

'Not plan, not exactly,' replied the Doctor. Overhead the gentle murmur of Lithois sliding along the ceramic walkways became louder. 'Time to move.'

They had reached the Physics level stairwell. By now a dull bass drone had begun, which baffled the Doctor for a second until he realised it was an emergency siren, Lithoi-style.

Excellent! he mused. Keep them occupied.

'Come on, let's go poking around Physics,' he cheerfully told Orskan. 'I'll be your prisoner.'

There was no single corridor along the Physics wing. Instead five corridors led off from the stairwell, labelled with arcane Lithoi pictograms.

'Eeny meeny minie mo,' guessed the Doctor. 'Middle left. Come on Orskan, do keep up.'


	33. Chapter 34

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT: Three By Nine

A meeting of cultures, if not of minds, took place on the outskirts of New Eucla whilst the Doctor and Orskan were playing their deadly game of hide-and-seek in the Lithoi baseship.

In accordance with their instructions, Alex and Terry had assembled everyone they could persuade, bamboozle, coerce or lie to, with transport and water and sunhats. The Doctor had been big on sunhats for his own reasons.

This caravan of vehicles and horses stretched, creaking, clopping or rattling along, for half a mile, and it was a testament to the Doctor's reputation that so many had turned up for a speculative mercy mission. In a lying-up position to the west of Eucla, Ace and Kirwin had seen the approaching procession from their post outside the township. At first they dismissed it as an unusually long trade convoy using the Eyre Highway, until it got closer and they realised the wagons and traps and silkies were empty.

Their occasionally-present help and scout, the white-faced dingo leader that Ace had dubbed "Jack", appeared at this most distracting moment and indicated it wanted at least one of the human pair to follow it. Ace sighed, judged the approaching convoy to be at least ten minutes away and got up.

'You've been gone a long time,' she told him. It wasn't clear if the dingoes picked up actual words, or merely the tone behind them: Jack looked back over his shoulder and looked at her.

He padded on, turning to look at her every few minutes, until he led her down a long sandy slope devoid of shrubs or grasses. A strange array of parallel logs lay at the bottom, shrouded by shadows and scattered sands.

Only when Ace got closer did she realise that the "logs" were actually corpses, and only when she got up to point-blank did she realise that the "corpses" were actually Lithoi robots housing dead Lithoi lizards. She shut her eyes at the ghastly collection of mutilated bodies, then opened them when Jack began a trumpeting howl that ran around the depression.

'Alright, alright!' she snapped. 'What do you want, a jelly-baby?'

Jack's howl stopped instantly and he darted a look at her. Ace damned her literalness, poked around in pockets and came up with a fluffy, months-old Kola Kube that she threw at the dingo, overarm (no girly underarm for her). It was snatched in mid-air and devoured in a split second of glass-like scrunchings.

She sat back on her haunches and watched Jack proudly canter amongst the - and she counted to make sure – twenty seven dead Lithoi, all arrayed as if on a mortuary slab. Yep. That one's insides were piled up next to it's eviscerated bowels, and that one's mangled head, looking like a battered chew-toy, perched atop the headless carcass.

The Prof, she mused, would understand what Jack was up to in about ten seconds flat, and then he'd be able to joke about it in fluent dingoese and translate the jokes back into English. She felt puzzled and dumbstruck. Did this display have a point?

Work it out! whispered her conscience, that same conscience that prompted her whenever she came across an intellectual puzzle. Before meeting her Professor Charming she'd never have dared to venture any kind of mental mapping; today her imagination took flight.

Twenty-seven of the alien spies and manipulators. Twenty-seven. New Eucla had been infested by only one alien, and that an erratic visitor.

Ah! She understood. The dingoes had killed every infiltrating alien spy across the whole littoral, from New South Wales to South Australia. Not only that, they'd dragged the festering carcasses here across hundreds of kilometres of desert. No wonder some of the bodies looked as if they'd been groomed inside a concrete mixer!

Next question was, why did the dingoes do this?

'Duh!' she intoned, hitting herself on the head. 'To show what they've been up to.' She pointed at Jack. 'You lot want credit for killing off the Lithoi spies, don't you!'

The dingo couldn't speak, so instead he danced around in a circle, yipping and biting his tail until Ace fell into a fit of giggles.

'Don't! Don't, or I'll have an accident!'

Okay, Dot, she sternly instructed herself. So the dingoes have killed all the sneaky-peeky alien spies across Australia. What follows from that?

Enlightenment shone on her like the sun in the Antipodean skies: with all their spies gone, the Lithoi had no idea what was happening beyond visual line-of-sight of their baseship. The Victorian technology of the Australians meant no radio or internet to intercept and decrypt, no telephone conversations to eavesdrop, and no longer any way to read hard-copy off-prints – which the locals would call "newspapers" – thanks to no more Lithoi spies.

'I definitely saw a flash,' stated Alex. He had his eyes "peeled", as the Australian saying went, looking in all directions out to one-hundred and eighty degrees from the massed caravan of transports heading south-east on the Eyre Highway.

'What?' asked Terry, six feet below on a plodding old hack.

'Flash. FLASH. Bearing - ' called Alex, leaning over his deckchair and risking a fall from the pantechnicon roof. 'Bearing three-one-three.'

Terry reined in his truculent mare and harried her out to the convoy's right flank, watched by dozens of anxious eyes. He'd been bold enough to promise them "little to no risk" in helping bring down Arcology One and really didn't relish the prospect of taking on evil alien flying saucers with giant lasers attached.

'Nothing to see there now,' he called, shading his eyes with a bronzed hand.

Because he rode atop the fourteen-foot high pantechnicon, Alex saw the rise where the flash had come from, and a figure that crouched there. _Definitely not Lithoi. Definitely human_. Then he recalled "Old Ben". _Probably human_.

'There's a person hiding up there,' he warned Terry.

'Right! I'm off to see who they are and why they're spying on us. You, you and you – come with me,' he ordered three reluctant horsemen trotting alongside the wagons.

Aex saw them trot away, envious at the easy grace with which all four managed their steeds; his sole effort at horse-riding led to a prompt fall and a sprained wrist. Away the four horsemen went, throwing up spurts of dust in the dry scrubland. Then they were riding up the rise, to be greeted at the top by two people, not one. One person danced up and down. A single rider – Terry, at a guess – dismounted and performed what seemed to be a hug with the dancer.

'Well, _someone's_ found a friend,' muttered the young man, sarcastically. That same lone horseman swung back up into his saddle, then vanished down the far side of the rise and was gone for several minutes. When he reappeared he hallooed the three stationary riders and all four headed back to the convoy.

'Guess who I discovered!' grinned Terry when he cantered back alongside Alex's huge mobile home.

'A person with low standards,' muttered Alex.

'What? No, I found Ace! She's up there with that American soldier the Doctor mentioned to us, the woman. Corwen – no, Kirwin. It was her binoculars we spotted catching the sun.'

'What are they doing, hanging about in the middle of nowhere off the highway?'

'Spying on the Lithoi. Look, we need to meet them properly. You come down here and I'll take us both up there. Charlie, can you get up to the lead wagon and tell them to halt for the time being?'

One of the trio of riders pushed his battered sunhat back, nodded silently and trotted off to the slow vanguard half a mile ahead. Reluctantly, Alex took the rear ladder to ground level, dropped off the vehicle and got a boost up over the saddle from Terry.

Off they thudded, hooves thrumming over the ground like a drumskin, then up the incline and to a meeting with Ace and an unfamiliar woman wearing combat fatigues.

'Hello astronaut!' greeted Ace with mocking good humour. 'Wow, who's picked up a tan!'

'Captain Kirwin,' snapped the American, throwing a smart salute as Alex slithered awkwardly off the horse.

'Hello, I'm Alex. From Arcology One. The Doctor asked Terry and me to bring a collection of transport out along the Eyre for when Arc One lands.' He stopped. 'Except we're not entirely sure where the Arc is going to land, and we daren't get too close to the Lithoi.'

Ace snorted.

'The Lithoi are currently staying put. Their missile platform got nuked by the Doctor, and the captain and I destroyed their last flying eye.'

Terry and Alex exchanged looks. So. That mysterious explosion in the desert hinterland _had_ been the Lithoi, except it had been the Lithoi getting a right slapping, not dealing it out.

Realising that the Timelord had been in more recent contact than she had, Ace quizzed the pair. Their answers were not reassuring.

'He said he was going to decoy the Lithoi, distract them from Arc One,' finished Alex. Both Ace and Kirwin looked appalled.

'He only gets into trouble without me!' exclaimed the young woman.

'I'm supposed to stop him getting into harms way!' exclaimed the older woman.

'Did he say what he was going to do?'

Alex shrugged.

'No, Ace. He said sabotage, no details.'

Kirwin was more practical.

'When was he going to put this sabotage plan into action?'

Mute shrugs.

'Sorry, he didn't give any details. Why?'

'Because then we'd have an idea of when the sphere is being de-orbited.'

Terry snickered.

'We asked him "when", too. And he only tapped the side of his nose and said we'd know when the time came.'

Kirwin visibly fumed. It struck her as criminally negligent for Doctor John Smith to put himself at risk in such a careless fashion, with such slapdash planning. Given the size and mass of Arcology One, they definitely would know when it returned from orbit, doubtless trailing a mane of fire and with retro-rockets sounding like the last trump! By that time the Lithoi would know about it, too. Then there'd be fireworks. Their missile platform might have been blasted to atoms but the Lithoi still had that devastating particle beam weapon which had destroyed Dart Two in mid-air, and a whole batch of Chinese ICBM's way back at the start of the Big Crash and the Great Northern War.

Moodily kicking a stone, she looked back down the sandy, bush-dotted slopes to the Eyre Highway and the conglomeration of horsed transport now standing still for half a mile along the baked grey tarmac. What about them? What rabbit could Smith pull out of a hat to render that mass of friable, flammable victims invulnerable to a death-ray with a range of six thousand kilometres?

The unpleasant realisation dawned on her that the convoy's drivers and riders seemed to be looking at her, even standing up and pointing at her. What? They assumed she was some American imperialist come to impound the entire Bight littoral?

'What are they staring at?' asked Ace, far less critical of the Doctor and thus more aware of her environment than the introverted American.

Kirwin whirled around, expecting to see Arc One inbound on a terminal ballistic trajectory focussed on her forehead.

Nope. Nothing. Clear skies.

She cocked her head back, looking up at where she guessed the Australians were looking, and was rewarded with the sight of a small dumbell-shaped object descending slowly under a big square parachute.

No, strike that, she told herself, picking up her binoculars. That dumbell-thingy is really big, it's just really far away. And fallling really slowly. With a start that brought goosebumps to her arms, she realised that the object was Arc One, unfamiliar in the atmosphere when she was used to seeing it on monitor screens against the sable background of space. When she dialled in a close-up of the sphere's outer hull, sooty streaks sould be seen everywhere, but the damn thing was intact.

She peered closer. Not only intact, but with a reinforced hull. A swathe of strange grey material coated the lower sphere.

'He second-guessed me,' she said, aloud. 'That sphere is coming down directly over the Lithoi's base. If they have a blind spot, that's it.' She paused to think for a second before smiling a lop-sided grin at Ace. 'He's a sly dog, your pal.'

Ace's temper briefly curdled before she came to a sudden realisation. "After my flyswatter, I need to work on a hammer" had been the Prof's phrase days ago. She remembered it well, as a strange piece of prose that made little sense at the time or afterwards.

'Alex,' she croaked, trying to spot the descending sphere. 'I know exactly where Arc One will land.'

'Oh, really?' he crowed happily. 'Expert in ballistics, are you?'

'No. Just in working out what Doctor Johnathan Devious Smith means by a "hammer". Arc One is going to come down right on top of the Lithoi base.'

Kirwin and Alex were initially horrified at the idea, before thinking it through. Arcology One's descent was sufficiently slow to allow it to land – or impact – without terminal damage. Obviously that was the intent behind the giant parachute. Once it landed, gravity would take over and cause the fusion plant in the smaller part of the dumbell to fall to earth as well, braked by that same parachute. Doubtless there'd be extensive structural damage, rendering the sphere incapable of sustaining life – which is where Alex caught his logic failure, because once down on Planet Earth, Arc One didn't _need_ to sustain life.

The Captain, having a background that dealt in weapons and warfare, studied Arc One as it came down with a slowness that made her curl her toes in dread. The Lithoi still had their beam weapon and an estimated twenty minutes to bring it into action. The sphere's additional layer of what must be heat-shield might fend the beam off, but that parachute was frighteningly vulnerable!


	34. Chapter 35

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE:Rain Rain Rain

The sphere had suffered it's first casualties of the descent when two Lexan window panels had shattered, sending hard-edged plastic pinging around the interior. Nothing lethal, just a score of shocked crew with gashes and gouges. There had been a brief, violent tempest as air in the sphere equalised with the atmosphere outside, creating a blast of condensation; fortune favoured them, since the outside pressure was relatively high and the worst effect was sore eardrums. Davy shut his eyes and gave thanks to any deity watching over them: if those panels had blown whilst they were in the upper atmosphere, they'd all be dead from hypoxia!

Bright sunlight also leaked into the sphere at a dozen points where the metal shielding covering windows had buckled or warped in the atmospheric entry or descent.

'Davy, check the radar return. How long till landing?' called Emilia, daring to move about in the open, having discarded her protective wicker cage. She'd been scurrying about examining the inner ends of the sphere's cross-bracing, noticing shearing in the protective bedding, and lateral flow in the rubber. Not surprising, given the stress the makeshift structures had been inflicted with.

'Just over twenty minutes,' replied Davy. They were directly over a small brown dot on the Nullarbor Plain: the Lithoi baseship. Not being up-to-speed on particle beam weapons, Davy had assumed from the Doctor's hints that being directly above the aliens meant Arc One couldn't be fired upon by them.

The Doctor's last breezy instruction on the loaned Tab had been about water: Arcology One needed to dump it's water reserves when about ten minutes from landing. The scions had argued about that: how they had argued! Voiding five hundred tonnes of water meant relying on what they could get from the environment, and nobody was able to guess or estimate what potable supplies they'd be able to acquire if or when they landed. It was also a one-time only gesture: blowing the seals keeping water contained would cause irreparable damage. Nor did the Doctor explain _why_ they needed to dump water. Most assumed because doing so lessened the mass of Arcology One and the less mass on final terminal impact, the less damage suffered.

Slowly, slowly - imperceptibly at first, the Lithoi baseship grew larger. From a brown dot it became a brown circle. A tiny discolouration on the land beside it grew into a minute crater – the site of Dart Three's death-dive, understood Davy.

Fifteen minutes to landing.

Fourteen.

Thirteen.

Twelve.

Eleven.

'Okay, Infrastructure – blow the water tanks,' said Davy into his Tab.

A waiting technician in the Infrastructure control room clicked open a protective panel, turned the button through ninety degrees and pressed it. A ripple of dull vibrations quivered everyone's feet and Davy saw a massive drizzle of white obscure the view below completely, before the water gradually fell lower in a scudding curtain.

Six hundred seconds to landing! and his heart beat even faster. So close they couldn't fail!

For the Lithoi who fled the Bridge, loss of face was compounded by loss of function. The cloud of steam that sent them scattering in panic had condensed on half a dozen computer terminals and shorted them out completely, besides blowing out most of the lighting in the Bridge's centre. Their method of removal was slow, necessarily so because no threats that Arkan made or hinted at could force his lessers to confront dihydrogen monoxide in liquid form. The Bridge was sealed off, it's temperature raised to the maximum of sixty degrees Centigrade (comfortably hot for the Lithoi) and the air-conditioning and dehumidifiers were turned full on.

Search teams were despatched to track down the traitor Orskan and his interfering human companion, who worryingly remained at large within the baseship. Arkan couldn't use the internal spy circuitry, either – that was in one of the destroyed consoles, and he'd had to wait half an hour before the levels of dihydrogen monoxide fell to acceptable levels before he could even get back on the Bridge.

Every numberless lower-caste worker was summoned from their work below or from rest, to repair damage as soon as possible. Ironically they worked far less effectively without the help of Orskan, who knew how to get the best out of the most. Arkan's shrill invective only made them fearful, overly-cautious and clumsy. Periodically he would demand to know why the traitor and helper hadn't been found.

Because he was cleverer and faster than the unaccelerated Lithoi, the Doctor might have answered if he had heard the question, and he probably ran that dialogue in his mind anyway, not being one to underestimate his own intellect. And because a lot of the Lithoi were dithering away on the Bridge, trying to restore computer systems that had never been designed to cope with water.

He and Orskan had played a tricky game of hide-and-seek amongst the laboratories, workshops, storerooms and other arcana of the Physics level. What the Doctor wanted was a laser or cutting tool that he could use to expose the baseship's inner workings, getting into the belly of the beast in a very literal sense and causing major systems failure.

So far – nothing. There had been a couple of promising candidates, but both the Pulsed Electron Laser and the Gamma Precision Cutting Beam had been in busy laboratories with too many aliens to risk a theft. Then, too, they'd had to dodge search teams of normal Lithoi, not difficult in itself but again prejudicial to finding dangerous things that went "zap".

Sealed within the Physics level, neither Orskan nor the Doctor saw or felt the gentle settling of half a thousand tonnes of water over the baseship, but those frantic aliens manning screens on the Bridge did. They panicked until an absence of alarms told them that the ship, able after all to retain it's integrity during interstellar travel, had shrugged off the water like an umbrella – a device they would only have been aware of thanks to human fashion and the Doctor.

More worrying still was the source of this sudden downpour, revealed by craning their external cameras upwards at an angle of ninety degrees: a slowly-descending orbital vehicle no more than nine minutes from terminal descent, point of impact –

the baseship itself.

Long, irreplaceable seconds ticked by as the stunned Lithoi realised that they'd been decoyed by an internal threat to prevent any action against an external one.

'Deploy the cannon!' yelped Arkan. 'Target the human vehicle!'

'We cannot,' began one of the half-dozen technicians and mechanics busy re-assembling a particular computer console, before collapsing dead as Arkan's laser-collar blasted away.

'No excuses!' snarled the Lithoi leader, now more worried about his scaled skin than the Contract for the first time in over sixty years.

'The cannon's firing and acquisition circuitry was damaged,' babbled another mechanic before his erratic leader could roast him, too. 'We are working to fix it.'

'Then work faster!' snapped Arkan.

'Can't you look faster?' complained Orskan, standing watch whilst the Doctor used his sonic weapon to open a stores cupboard marked "DANGER!".

'No,' replied the Doctor, shortly. 'I've got to interpret Lithoi pictograms on whatever's stored in these cupboards, and work out what I can combine them to do.' He cast a look to left and right: they were opposite a deserted open-fronted lab, which didn't contain anything more dangerous than a fume cupboard and a dirty workbench. Physical chemistry, he guessed.

There were several likely candidates in the stores cupboard: from the labels and their diagrammatic molecular schematics he managed accurate guesses at several: Methyl Nitrate – noooo, far too temperamental; Copper Azide – much the same, if not so extreme; ONC – too inert, he'd need special detonators for that; Thermite – ah, thermite. Powdered iron oxide and aluminium.

'They weld with that,' explained Orskan. The Doctor understood immediately: thermite when burned produced molten iron and heat, vast quantities of heat, without any other byproducts. If you used MIG or TIG to do welding then you risked releasing water into the air thanks to the byproduct of combusted gasses.

He plucked the plastic jar from the shelf with the glee of a housewife finding a supermarket bargain. When he turned to gloat at Orskan, he found the Lithoi listening, focussed with purpose on distant sounds.

'A search party,' whispered the alien. Really! frowned the Doctor. How inconvenient.

'Hurry up!' snapped Arkan, and Mirskan alongside him twitched anxiously. The labouring technicians and mechanics swarming around the consoles backed away from the particle beam cannon's control unit, loudly declaring it fixed.

'We can't get out,' whispered Mirskan. 'There's surface water in an ocean around the baseship.'

The extensive, shallow water around the baseship couldn't be called an ocean, unless you weren't used to the real thing; a large pond or very small lake would have been more accurate. Regardless of definition, the baseship's exits were blocked by water up to half a metre deep.

Diligent operators ran the particle beam's checks with speed and dexterity. The giant weapon came into view as it elevated from beneath an irising protective cover, angling up at the now frighteningly-close human vehicle. Coils pulsed and buzzed, giant accumulators discharged and a searing beam of energy tore into the descending sphere. To no effect.

'Again!' called Arkan. 'With more power!'

At this range the cannon couldn't miss and the sphere was blasted again, taking the punishment without any obvious damage at all, bar the glowing cinders of regolith.

'Continuous fire!' snarled Arkan. By the Great Spirit, the thing was dangerously close now – they had to destroy it!

The lunar regolith glowed, fissured, cracked and resisted, fumed, split and came apart – too slowly. One of the Lithoi technicians slewed the cannon across an arc that went beyond the protected base of Arcology One and vapourised a swathe of the braking parachute, removing a substantial area and reducing the braking effect by at least twenty per cent.

The sphere came down sharply and suddenly, eighteen thousand tonnes deadweight dropping like a hammer on a nail (the Doctor would have been simultaneously satisfied and horrified at this serendipity). Nearly all the remaining Lexan windows shattered inwards and outwards, inflicting hundreds of injuries; one of the internal bracing legs sheared at the half-way point and came smashing down across the interior, killing dozens of people in a flurry of soil, plastics and wicker. The sphere's base rang like a drum, bouncing people off their feet or onto all fours, and a hideous crunching noise began, growing louder by the second. Davy watched the landscape outside slowly rise, jerkily, and wondered what had happened – nothing terminal or he wouldn't be able to watch. Desperate but not serious?

Within the baseship, the gigantic impact ran down it's interior, smashing down or buckling internal walls and partitions, destroying fitments, creating short circuits and arcs of sparks. Bad though this might have been, worse was to follow: every storage device, space, restraint or bottle in Biology smashed, including those flasks holding the hideous viral concoction that Nilkan 34 had dubbed "Armageddon Cocktails". The seals that would have kept the disease agent confined to a single laboratory storage zone were rendered useless when the very walls had split open. Nilkan had scant seconds to realise that he'd doomed the entire ship before he began to split apart in a welter of haemorraghing cells and glands oozing virus-laden pus.

Cracking the store cupboard door open a fraction, the Doctor peered across the deserted corridor and wondered what that slightly-higher pitched noise now blasting across the ship meant.

He and Orskan had contorted themselves into the cupboard and across it's shelves to avoid being caught by the incredibly slow Lithoi search party. Escaping inept searchers wasn't a problem, but waiting till they moved on took ages.

Orskan threw up his stubby forearms in panic when he recognised the alarm.

'Biological contamination!' he hissed. 'That fershlugginer Nilkan has allowed a disease to escape!'

Not panicking meant that the Doctor dragged his alien accomplice across the empty corridor and into the empty laboratory beyond. He searched around before tilting his head back, pinching the brow of his nose, closing his eyes and exhaling sharply.

'The sphere isn't supposed to land for another five minutes. There's been an accident. We need to leave.'

On cue, the baseship's lighting began to dim from it's usual muddy quality to that of a subterranean swamp viewed through a lens smeared with vaseline.

'That's – that's the emergency warning,' babbled Orskan, causing the Doctor to realise that a slow metabolism was not necessarily bad, if the possessor came to the right conclusions.

' "Deadly pathogen on the loose?" he tried, sarcastically.

Orskan nodded. One gesture that the Lithoi and humans had in common.

'Yes. The level and inter-corridor seals will be preventing further transmission.' Gulping, he looked at the walls. 'We are trapped in here.'

'I think – NOT!' burbled the Doctor, all idiot bonhomie. He unscrewed the cap on his jar of thermite, then spilled grains in a three metre circle across the floor. What remained went across the floor and got piled up in a corner. 'Come and stand in the circle.'

The Lithoi did, not without a fair sense of foreboding. He witnessed that strange sonic weapon applied to the circle of pellets, which promptly flared up, glowing white-hot in less time than it took to tell.

Suddenly the floor gave way, and Orskan found himself walloped against the floor of the next level below them – Stores. They had fallen a level, into a deserted corridor decorated only by a big blue box. Even as they dusted off sparklets of iron, the corridor lighting began to dim.

'Come on!' shouted the Doctor. 'Into the TARDIS!'

In the space of minutes, airborne micro-organisms spread throughout the battered hull, infecting Bridge level first, since that was closest to Biology. Arskan died amidst his useless bodyguard, barely comprehending what had doomed him, expiring seconds before Miskan also died. The virus made it's implacable way downwards, into Anthropology, then Astronomy, then Physics, slaying all in its path. An out-of-place big blue box on the Stores level was the only object to escape the deadly progress.

By the time that "Armageddon Cocktail" had worked down to Mechanics, a few speedy Lithoi had managed to don protective suits of the kind worn to keep Earth's sodden, saturated atmosphere at bay.

They might have survived, and the pathogen, too, if it were not for the Doctor's fortuitous use of excess thermite in a corner of the Physics laboratory. Molten thermite cascaded into interstitial spaces normally non-existent, burning it's way downwards more spectacularly than the virus.

However, whereas the virus could do nothing when pitted against metals or ceramics, thermite could. And did. It burnt a fist-sized hole into the very bottom of the baseships final bulkhead, and then cascaded onto the propulsion units below, causing a slow cascade-failure of the electromagnetic baffles that kept anti-matter granules safely distant from normal matter. If any of the Lithoi Bridge crew had remained alive, they might have been able to institute an emergency engine de-coupling.

Over an hour after his escape, the Doctor's thermite finally caused the Lithoi baseship's propulstion units to explode, disintegrating everything that remained inside the shell of the hull: structures, Lithoi, virus. The incredibly robust baseship's exterior didn't suffer a single fracture.

Kirwin watched in what she recognised was described in literature as "horrified fascination".

Arcology One had dangled lower and lower, until her binoculars began to pick up ground data from terrain in the foreground and she'd gone over to the Mark One Human Eyeball. Not long after that she'd been dazzled when the Lithoi fired a weapon at practically point-blank range at the sphere, repeatedly, destroying part of the braking parachute.

That caused the whole sphere to lurch and drop, with a clash that echoed across the plains, sending debris cascading from the shuddering arcology. A gigantic collar of water spumed up around the lower column of the Lithoi ship, sent flying by transmitted shock – and, amazingly, the whole structure began to subside, throwing up big muddy flurries where hull merged into water.

She passed the binoculars over to Ace, who whistled long and loud at the fantastic view.

'That's why they dumped the water,' she mused. 'Soften the earth, make it easier to land – wow, it's still pushing downwards!'

Seconds later the mushroom-shaped upper part of the baseship thumped down into the giant muddy slurry replacing the earlier, quieter waters, sending tonnes of slimy mud in a pulsing cicrular torrent out across the plains. Balked by this sudden stop, the sphere scraped slowly down the side of the curving structure, at an angle, before gently settling into a final bed of mud that cushioned the shock of landing. A full half-minute later the power-plant began to settle onto the Nullarbor Plain, until Infrastructure blew open descent-bags that cushioned the engine section, cushioned it completely well clear of the desert floor. This was good news, since the Australian outback didn't need decorating with the exotic by-products of a nuclear fission motor.

'Made it!' bellowed Ace, jumping up and down with delight. She tore off down the rise towards the stationary convoy, waving her arms like a windmill.

She raced up to the wagon carrying Alex with no ceremony, throwing pebbles at a window.

'Alex! Alex!' she shouted. 'Come on, talk to me, you piker.'

His face appeared.

'What do you want, Dorothy? I was just about to have a -

'The sphere has landed! We need you to get your caravan of love on the move.'

'What!' exclaimed Alex, wonderingly.

'It's true, down in one piece – well, mostly, bits were being scraped off. Anyway, get your arse into gear and get moving!'


	35. Chapter 36

CHAPTER THIRTY: A Really Good Time

Just as the friction of re-entry had created a bow-wave and elevated temperatures, the bombardment of Arcology One by the Lithoi's particle beam weapon generated a sudden blast of heat. The arcology's hydroponic "soil" seethed and smoked, plastic pathways became liquid and flowed like butter, the few retained dew ponds flashed into clouds of steam and exposed structural members glowed red hot.

Davy, along with nearly everyone else aboard the sphere, thought they were doomed. He realised after an immensely extended, suffering ten seconds that he could still worry about being vapourised. Also, the smoke and fumes didn't get any worse. Were they past the worst?

Just when he'd decided that Arcology One had endured the worst an enormous shock came from the floor, a physical blow that rocked his wicker frame back and forth, sending clouds of dirt, dust, hydroponic soil, water and broken structural components into the air, to clatter back down again.

More broken structural parts began to collapse and fall into the sphere's interior, accompanied by a _profundo _shrieking that co-ordinated precisely with the jerking, grating progress of Arc One downwards as the exterior view changed and fell below the horizon. Once more, the sphere's occupants suffered casualties.

Instead of the smashing, bashing, fatal bloodbath expected and dreaded for so long, Arcology One's end came amidst a shallow lagoon of mud, a gentle liquid cushion that slowed the final landing and ensured that the sphere's dislocation and distortion resulted in the fewest number of casualties. In decades to come a small but regular pilgrimage took place to see where their ancestors had landed, on a baked and barren plain scattered with rusting remnants of the twenty-first century, and amid the battered skeleton of a twenty-first century orbital home. Eventually, thanks to popular pressure, the Reconstituted Antipodean Government put up a broadcasting plaque that inspired those of the Nerva generation.

In the here-and-now, feeling genuine Earth gravity meant less than smelling and breathing in Earth air. Holed, breached, sheared and split in a hundred places, Arcology One allowed it's crew to inhale what they had never experienced – real, whole, unfiltered air.

'Ah – we're down!' said Davy, so quietly that only he heard.

'WE'RE DOWN!' he shouted, splintering apart his wicker cradle, punching it into pieces at the cost of cut knuckles and bleeding palms. 'WE'RE DOWN AND ALIVE!'

This shouting was dwarfed into inconsequence as the entire sphere's surviving population burst into a spontaneous cheer that made the surviving Lexan panels rattle in sympathy. True, they were canted at an angle of probably thirty degrees from normal, with an oozing ocean of mud slowly coming inside from the broken windows at the lowest level, and they had no water left – but they were Downstairs, and alive.

There might have been a struggle to exit the sphere with the dozens of injured and dead, had help from outside not arrived in the nick of time. A whole convoy of wagons laden with water and sunhats, able and willing to help the "Starmen" out of their ruined environment. The sunhats proved to be highly useful, allowing the sphere's residents to cope with a new, comparatively huge and empty environment that didn't curve upwards at the edges. Plus they prevented sunstroke and sunburn, two conditions utterly novel to sphere residents.

When Infrastructure checked the giant fluid gears that the fusion power-plant had once driven, they were found to be shattered by transmitted shock. The plant itself, carefully powered down and with anti-shock cradles applied, was in fine form. Within thirty minutes of landfall it was working at half-capacity to replace the emergency battery supply, keeping embryos in storage, maintaining computer systems and all the other electrical equipment aboard the Arc.

Alex and Terry were in the forefront of all this organized activity, both having experience of being aboard the Arc and Downstairs. They pointed and directed people, helped to fill wagons, pointed out what was delicate or sterile. Ace bounced around enthusiastically, hindering just as much as she helped, but tolerated for her sheer exuberance and delight.

That stoney-faced American soldier, Kirwin, took charge of the bodies: forty seven dead, most killed when the internal strut broke apart and collapsed. A series of graves were dug for them, another novelty for a population who had recycled everything aboard their orbital arcology.

The one person absent was the Doctor. His presence, or lack of it, was noted by many people.

'This,' said the Doctor, sweeping a hand from one side of the horizon to the other as if he owned the place, 'Is the Kalahari Desert.'

It looked like a traditional desert: endless sweeping dunes of red sand in all directions. No trees, no plants, no animals or insects. In fact there were animals, insects too, if you knew where to look, and when.

'Looks nice. Hot and dry,' commented Orskan. Feeling his metabolism begin to falter, he gulped another jelly baby, one of the bagful he'd been given by the Doctor.

'Yeeees. About your sugar boost,' murmured the Timelord. 'Don't overdo it.'

The lizard-like alien ducked his head.

'They won't last much longer, Doctor Smith. After that I doubt I shall last much longer, either.'

'Oh, come now!' burbled the small man, giving the startled alien a consoling hug, a gesture completely unknown in Lithoi culture. 'Watch this.' He looked carefully over the ground, before finding what he sought: scattered ants running around. With the tip of his umbrella he dug and poked, sending ants pouring furiously over the sands in search of their tormentor. Finally he reached into the sub-surface hole created and pulled a strange insect out. It resembled an ant, but one with a grossly swollen abdomen. He tossed it to the alien, who caught it, not understanding what a deformed ant meant.

'Honey ant,' explained the Doctor. 'Used by the nest to store sugars. Try eating it.'

A reluctant Orskan chewed up the insect, his eyes enlarging in surprise.

'Doctor!' he said (actually hissed). 'Sugar!'

'Told you so,' came the smug response. 'I keep my word.' He passed his trusty, if now battered, umbrella to Orskan. 'Here, you'll need this occasionally. Not often, they only get an inch or two of rain here per year. You might want to also research the bee and beehive, for future reference.'

Tipping his boater politely, he left the lone Lithoi, sole survivor of the alien incursion, standing on the dunes of the Kalahari. Having kept his word to Orskan, he now needed to oversee his other concern, the humans of the Bight littoral and the residents of Arcology One.

When he emerged from the TARDIS to inspect, the view confirmed what he'd seen on the scanner: a column of helpers getting people and products from Arcology One and into horse-drawn transport.

_Excellent! All this technical expertise will be distributed along the Eyre Highway, starting in a few days. Without the Lithoi spying and manipulating and destroying, these people are going to come on in leaps and bounds. The Americans will have their shuttle operation back in working order in a matter of weeks_. _Why, the others spheres Upstairs might even use this method to return themselves._

Amidst all the frantic labour and activity beyond, a single figure stood out: a young woman who stretched to her full height in a boilersuit, craned her head to detect where the strange yet familiar sound had come from. Her silhouette, a minute black dot on the dry red earth, changed in orientation and began to slowly grow larger, approaching the TARDIS.

Fully five minutes after he'd materialised, the Doctor greeted Ace in a flurry of arms, hugs, Nullarbor dust and horsey sweat.

'Ooof!' he exhaled. 'Pleased to see you!'

Ace beamed at him, standing back to throw an errant lock over her temple.

'Prof! You did it! Brought the Branson Mansion back to Earth, hardly any casualties, destroyed the evil aliens, got the survivors help from the Ozzers.'

A silent frown grew on the Timelord's brow. Casualties. Yes. He knew there'd be deaths. His various scenarios run non-stop every five minutes for two days predicted between fifty and a thousand dead. Leaning back into the TARDIS interior he used his umbrella handle to drag an unwary Ace inside, too.

'Many dead?' he asked, causing the doors to rapidly close.

'Almost fifty,' replied Ace, casting a wondering glance at the narrowing vista beyond the closing doors. 'What - '

'Ah!' gasped the Doctor, stung to the quick. _Only_ fifty! He leant forward over the control panels, seeking distraction in twiddling dials and levers and meters and contacts.

'We're not staying to help?' asked Ace, a genuine puzzlement in her voice. The Doctor straightened and faced her, looking startled himself.

'Say what, Ace? I rather think not!' and he muttered a long quotation from Plato before looking up again. 'Ace, Ace – I may turn up to administer first aid on a large scale, slay the monster, help with the harvest – but I don't seek to impose my ideas. These people need to arrive at their own solutions, not something decided by an outside agency.'

He held back one or two facts that neither the Timelords nor himself had seen fit to divulge to any other party. For one: why did the populations of the northern hemisphere recover so quickly from the Great Northern War?

Well, not being modest, but he'd had a hand in that. As an advisor to Miss Branson so many decades ago, he'd been privileged to suggest to other European governments that they invest in submarine survival environments. Consequently, the Mediterranean had been fringed with millions of secret submarine settlers who managed a quite passable existence, entirely unsuspected by the Lithoi. After all, if you as an alien had difficulty conceiving of standing water at the level of a puddle, how could you ever conceptualise actually living beneath a billion-tonne layer of the lethal, terrifying stuff?

'I'll miss them,' rued Ace. 'They didn't bother about how posh you talked or where you came from.'

'Terry or Alex?' asked the Doctor, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. If this trip had achieved nothing more than to make Ace forget the treacherous Mike Smith, it would have been worth it.

A delicate flush embroidered Ace's cheek for mere seconds.

'Not like that!' she insisted. 'Everybody in New Eucla. And on the Arc.' She noticed the Doctor's wince. 'What? What!'

'Just don't call it that. Don't ask, just don't!' He changed direction and metre. 'Now, do you want to face a severe challenge to the whole planet?'

Ace pinched herself.

'Prof, what did we just defeat if not a challenge to the whole planet!'

He tapped a finger alongside his nose, a gesture copied from the Fourth Doctor, who had a splendid nose to practice this gesture with.

'Given the timeframe, and happenings, and chronology, I've just realised that we've materialised shortly before an epochal event.'

It had come to him suddenly, fleeing that deadly microbial infection deep in the bowels of the Lithoi baseship. The population of Earth divided into fractious colonies, depopulated overall, suffering an alien occupation.

Ace looked at him with genuine ignorance.

'What do you mean, Prof?'

He turned and looked at her with a level, cool, analytical gaze. Once you had joined all the dots it was simple, and obvious.

'The Dalek Invasion of Earth.'


End file.
